Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 1 May 2010 21:23:14 -0700
From:      Alfred Perlstein <alfred@freebsd.org>
To:        Ed Schouten <ed@80386.nl>
Cc:        freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: [Extension] utmpx and LOGIN_FAILURE
Message-ID:  <20100502042314.GV36233@elvis.mu.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100501124544.GR56080@hoeg.nl>
References:  <20100501124544.GR56080@hoeg.nl>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
* Ed Schouten <ed@80386.nl> [100501 06:05] wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Some time ago I noticed some operating systems offer an interface called
> btmp, which is essentially a wtmp for logging failed login attempts.
> Instead of taking the same approach, I'd rather do something as follows:
> 
> 	http://80386.nl/pub/utmpx-login_failure.diff.txt
> 
> This patch adds a new utmpx log entry type called LOGIN_FAILURE.
> Unfortunately we are the only operating system that does it this way,
> but I suspect if we can already get OpenSSH and PAM to use this
> interface, we've got reasonable coverage. The patch only has the
> modifications for OpenSSH.
> 
> An example of what this looks like:
> 
> | $ last | grep failed
> | sdlfkjdf            mekker.80386.nl        Sat May  1 14:14   login failed
> 
> The idea behind having this, is to make logging of such failed attempts
> more generic and easier to obtain. It would be quite nice if
> applications like DenyHosts can simply harvest this database using
> getutxent(3), instead of using all sorts of regular expressions on the
> log files.
> 
> Any thoughts on this subject?

I am obviously not too familiar with this code, but I am worried
that unless done properly we could be vulnerable to DoS or obliterating
records by flooding the logging facility.

I'm also wondering why we're going to diverge from other *nix, is
there added value to diverging from what others do?




-- 
- Alfred Perlstein
.- AMA, VMOA #5191, 03 vmax, 92 gs500, 85 ch250, 07 zx10
.- FreeBSD committer



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20100502042314.GV36233>