bug in Solaris 2.6 security logging

[rmilner () NRAO EDU (Ruth Milner [VLA])]

A heads-up for anyone monitoring login failures under Solaris:

Under Solaris 2.x, login failure information is not all logged
in one place. The tty and remote source host, if any, are written
to /var/adm/messages, while the account name that was attempted,
along with the tty but *not* the source host, is logged in
/var/adm/loginlog *if it exists*. /var/adm/loginlog is not created
by default when the OS is installed; it has to be touched and
should be mode 600.

Solaris 2.6 does not write anything in /var/adm/loginlog even if
it does exist. This has been assigned bug ID 4096961.

I also spoke to Sun about the fact that from the standpoint of
monitoring security at a large site, complete information needs to
be in one file; it is difficult to automate cross-referencing of
multiple files, especially when /var/adm/messages summarizes
repeated failures while /var/adm/loginlog does not. This has been
assigned bug ID 4101839.
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Ruth Milner                            NRAO                  Socorro NM
Manager of Computing Systems    rmilner () aoc nrao edu