HackBlue

Labs / Linux log triage

The hour missing from auth.log

auth.log on files-01 jumps from 01:58 to 03:10. The journal and the login records were not touched. Find the gap, the session inside it, and how lines were removed.

  • Terminal mission
  • Intermediate
  • 4 objectives
  • 0 of 4 solved

Briefing

During an unrelated review you notice that /var/log/auth.log on files-01 has no entries between roughly 02:00 and 03:00, a busy hour for backups.

journald keeps its own copy of sshd messages, and wtmp (read with last) records logins separately. A responder also collected root’s shell history into /cases/ir-2291.

analyst@files-01

files-01 · Linux log triage

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