Re: possible "comm"

[LC Bruzenak <lenny@magitekltd.com>]

On Mon, 2008-08-04 at 16:31 -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Thursday 31 July 2008 17:01:22 LC Bruzenak wrote:
> > While looking through some audit events in the audit-viewer I saw what I
> > thought might be a display error (see below "comm="), however when I
> > look at the event using ausearch I see the same thing:
> >
> > # ausearch -ts recent -i -a 50457
> > ----
> > type=SOCKADDR msg=audit(07/31/2008 15:37:43.602:50457) : saddr=inet
> > host:127.0.0.1 serv:16001
> > type=SYSCALL msg=audit(07/31/2008 15:37:43.602:50457) : arch=x86_64
> > syscall=connect success=no exit=-111(Connection refused) a0=10
> > a1=2f96d30 a2=10 a3=7fff13ee75dc items=0 ppid=22794 pid=23014 auid=root
> > uid=root gid=root euid=root suid=root fsuid=root egid=root sgid=root
> > fsgid=root tty=pts3 ses=818 comm=/usr/share/audi exe=/usr/bin/python
> > subj=root:auditadm_r:auditadm_t:s15:c0.c1023 key=(null)
> > type=AVC msg=audit(07/31/2008 15:37:43.602:50457) : avc:  denied
> > { recvfrom } for  pid=23014 comm=/usr/share/audi
> 
> You are referring to comm ^^ ?
> 
> http://lxr.linux.no/linux/include/linux/sched.h#L201
> 
> The define is 16 characters long. This is to give you a hint about what it is 
> that the interpreter might be executing. When its full path, you only get the 
> first 16 chars, when someone just uses the command name and lets the shell 
> find it, its more likely what you wanted.
> 
> comm is not 100% trustworthy but it helps you figure out what was being 
> interpreted. My guess would be audit-viewer in this case.
> 
> -Steve

Steve,

I apologize for the poorly-worded email; thanks for the answer. You did
a good job figuring out what I was asking about. :)

Since the audit-viewer script has:
exec /usr/bin/python -O /usr/share/audit-viewer/main.py "$@"

I'd guess that you were pointing in the right direction.
But I would prefer that the comm field be more trustworthy.

In reality, the /usr/bin/audit-viewer executable script really called
the python exec which then interpreted the main.py script...I think. I'm
not getting that from this event, however.

Maybe if I go examine the other events before there I'd get a better
picture to correlate the viewer launch.

I guess the real issue here (as you pointed out) is that we have
different entities - interpreted script/interpreter executable as
opposed to command/resulting executable, but the same structure is used
for each.

Thx,
LCB.
-- 
LC (Lenny) Bruzenak
lenny@magitekltd.com