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Operating Systems AIX Bullet proof of user history activity Post 302278491 by aixylinux on Tuesday 20th of January 2009 10:32:26 AM
Old 01-20-2009
I saw an interesting take on this problem once. Only Operations had the root password, and management approval was required to give it out. Admins gained root access by running a shell script (call it suroot) which called the script command to direct the screen activity to a temporary file, then called sudo to put the caller into root shell. When root was exited the script sent the screen output file to a remote security server. When root was entered and exited, an email was sent to the security server. This did not prevent the root user from removing or altering the temporary script file, so it was no proof against clever malice. But an audit that showed entry and exit without a screen file would have been flagged. But even that might have been hacked. The tool was more for a record of what was done, which was useful for honest admins to diagnose a goof-up.

In your case, this is closing the barn door. If you can't trust root, who can you trust?
 

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su-to-root(1)						      Debian GNU/Linux manual						     su-to-root(1)

NAME
su-to-root - A simple script to give an `interactive' front-end to su. It can be used in menu entry commands to ask for the root password SYNOPSIS
su-to-root [-X] [-p <user>] -c <command> DESCRIPTION
Most menu entries simply start an editor or a game or whatever. But some menu entries would like to give the user the ability to change important settings in the system, that require root privileges. su-to-root can be used to ask for the root password. OPTIONS
-c <command> The command to execute as a string. This option is mandatory. -p <user> The name of the user to change to, instead of root. -X The command is a X11 program that does not require a terminal. This is to be used with menu entries that declare needs="X11". ENVIRONMENT
SU_TO_ROOT_X Select the su-like program called by su-to-root -X. Supported values are gksu, kdesu, kde4su, ktsuss, sux, gksudo and kdesudo. kde4su denotes the KDE4 version of kdesu. When this variable is not set su-to-root will currently try to use gksu, kdesu, kde4su, ktsuss, sux and the built-in code, in that order with the exception that under a KDE session, kdesu and kde4su are prefered over gksu. The exact set of programs to try and their order is subject to change without notice. SU_TO_ROOT_SU Select the su-like program used in text mode. Supported values are sudo, sux and su, the later being the default. FILES
/etc/su-to-rootrc ~/.su-to-rootrc su-to-root will source these files at startup in this order. This lets you define and modify the environment variables above without restarting your X session. COPYING
su-to-root is distributed under the GNU General Public License. (GPL 2.0 or greater). AUTHORS
Joost Witteveen <joostje@debian.org> X11 support by Morten Brix Pedersen and Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> SEE ALSO
update-menus(1), menufile(5), /usr/share/doc/menu/html Debian Project 20 October 1998 su-to-root(1)
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