Auditing ESXi Shell logins and commands
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Auditing ESXi Shell logins and commands

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Article ID: 321910

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

ESXi 5.0 and higher maintains a history of all commands entered in the ESXi Shell, whether accessed at the console or via SSH. This shell command history is maintained in the shell.log file. Within the transcription of commands, the command issuer is identified by the process or world ID. This article describes how to correlate authentication information from the auth.log file with the history of commands executed in the ESXi Shell.

For more information on the locations of the log files described, see Location of ESXi 5.0 log files (306907) and Location of log files for VMware products (306962).

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Resolution

To determine the commands executed in the ESXi Shell, and which user and client issued the request:

  1. Obtain access to the auth.log and shell.log log files.
    • Consume logs via syslog in vRealize Log Insight, and filter on appname=login,sshd,shell
    • Log in to the ESXi Shell and open each log using the less command.
    • Use a web browser to access https://ESXiHostnameOrIP/host/auth.log and https://ESXiHostnameOrIP/host/shell.log.
    • Use the vifs command line utility in the vCLI to copy the logs to a client and review the logs.
    • Read the files from within a vm-support log bundle.
       
  2. Open the log file /var/log/auth.log in a text viewer.
     
  3. Identify the authentication record, including the Username, Timestamp, and World ID for the session:
     
    • ESXi Shell login at the console appears similar to:

      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS login[64386]: root login on 'char/tty/1'
       
    • ESXi Shell login via interactive SSH appears similar to:

      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Connection from 10.11.12.13 port 2605
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Accepted keyboard-interactive/pam for root from 10.11.12.13 port 2605 ssh2
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[64386]: Session opened for 'root' on /dev/char/pty/t0
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Session closed for 'root' on /dev/char/pty/t0
      ...
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Session closed for 'root' 2
       
    • ESXi Shell login via SSH with public key appears similar to:

      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Connection from 10.11.12.13 port 2605
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Accepted publickey for root from 10.11.12.13 port 2605 ssh2
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[64386]: Session opened for 'root' on /dev/char/pty/t0
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Session closed for 'root' on /dev/char/pty/t0
      ...
      YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS sshd[12345]: Session closed for 'root' 2

    Each of these authentication records indicates a successful authentication for the user root on August 29th at 18:01 GMT. The SSH methods also include the IP address that the connection was initiated from. The shell session is being handled by World 64386.
     
  4. Close the /var/log/auth.log file.
     
  5. Open the /var/log/shell.log file in a text viewer.
     
  6. Identify commands entered that contain the same World ID as identified in Step 3, appearing similar to:

    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS shell[64386]: Interactive shell session started
    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS shell[64386]: cd /var/log
    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS shell[64386]: ls
    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS shell[64386]: vmware -v
    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS shell[64386]: exit

    Because the commands were entered in the console session handled by world ID 64386, they correspond to the authentication session established by the user root as described in Step 3.



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