Man page - pam_tty_audit(8)

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Manual

PAM_TTY_AUDIT(8) Linux-PAM Manual PAM_TTY_AUDIT(8)

pam_tty_audit - Enable or disable TTY auditing for specified users

pam_tty_audit.so [disable=patterns] [enable=patterns]

The pam_tty_audit PAM module is used to enable or disable TTY auditing. By default, the kernel does not audit input on any TTY.

disable=patterns

For each user matching patterns, disable TTY auditing. This overrides any previous enable option matching the same user name on the command line. See NOTES for further description of patterns.

enable=patterns

For each user matching patterns, enable TTY auditing. This overrides any previous disable option matching the same user name on the command line. See NOTES for further description of patterns.

open_only

Set the TTY audit flag when opening the session, but do not restore it when closing the session. Using this option is necessary for some services that don't fork() to run the authenticated session, such as sudo.

log_passwd

Log keystrokes when ECHO mode is off but ICANON mode is active. This is the mode in which the tty is placed during password entry. By default, passwords are not logged. This option may not be available on older kernels (3.9?).

Only the session type is supported.

PAM_SESSION_ERR

Error reading or modifying the TTY audit flag. See the system log for more details.

PAM_SUCCESS

Success.

When TTY auditing is enabled, it is inherited by all processes started by that user. In particular, daemons restarted by a user will still have TTY auditing enabled, and audit TTY input even by other users unless auditing for these users is explicitly disabled. Therefore, it is recommended to use disable=* as the first option for most daemons using PAM.

To view the data that was logged by the kernel to audit use the command aureport --tty.

The patterns are comma separated lists of glob patterns or ranges of uids. A range is specified as min_uid:max_uid where one of these values can be empty. If min_uid is empty only user with the uid max_uid will be matched. If max_uid is empty users with the uid greater than or equal to min_uid will be matched.

Please note that passwords in some circumstances may be logged by TTY auditing even if the log_passwd is not used. For example, all input to an ssh session will be logged - even if there is a password being typed into some software running at the remote host because only the local TTY state affects the local TTY auditing.

Audit all administrative actions.

session	required pam_tty_audit.so disable=* enable=root

aureport(8), pam.conf(5), pam.d(5), pam(7)

pam_tty_audit was written by Miloslav Trmač <mitr@redhat.com>. The log_passwd option was added by Richard Guy Briggs <rgb@redhat.com>.

06/29/2025 Linux-PAM