Detailed logging for chrooted sftp users

At work we have been migrating some of our customers from ftp to sftp. This gives us and the customer better security but one drawback with my initial sftp setup was that we didn't have detailed logs like most ftp servers produce. All we were getting in the logs were records of logins and disconnects. We didn't have any information on what a client was doing once they were connected. Things like file uploads, file downloads, etc. I had some time this morning to take a look at this. I started with doing some google searches for 'sftp logging'.

I found a lot of blog posts saying that all you had to do was change this line in sshd_config:

ForceCommand internal-sftp

to:

ForceCommand internal-sftp -l VERBOSE

I tried this but didn't get any additional logging. What I finally figured out is that the logging setup for chrooted sftp is a bit more involved. I ran across this blog which spells out what needs to be done quite clearly. The meat of the problem is that the chrooted sftp process can't open /dev/log because it is not within the chrooted filesystem. An additional layer of complexity is that my sftp home directories exist on an NFS mount. Here are the steps from bigmite.com's blog that I used for my CentOS system.

1. Modify /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add -l VERBOSE -f LOCAL6 to the internal-sftp line.

Match group sftpuser
 ChrootDirectory /sftp/%u
 X11Forwarding no
 AllowTcpForwarding no
 ForceCommand internal-sftp -l VERBOSE -f LOCAL6

2. Modify the syslog configuration

If the users sftp directory is not on the root filesystem syslog will need to use an additonal logging socket within the users filesystem. For example /sftp is the seperate sftp filesystem (like my setup with the sftp home directories on an NFS mount). For syslog on Redhat/CentOS edit /etc/sysconfig/syslog so that the line:

SYSLOGD_OPTIONS="-m 0"

reads:

SYSLOGD_OPTIONS="-m 0 -a /sftp/sftp.log.socket"

To log the sftp information to a separate file the syslog daemon needs to be told to log messages for LOCAL6 to /var/log/sftp.log. Add the following to /etc/syslog.conf:

#For SFTP logging
local6.* /var/log/sftp.log

Restart syslog with the command service syslog restart. When syslog starts up it will create the sftp.log.socket file.


3. Create links to the log socket
Now you will need to create a link in each users chrooted home directory so the chrooted sftp process can write to the log. This will also need to be done everytime you create a new user.

mkdir /sftp/testuser1/dev
chmod 755 /sftp/testuser1/dev
ln /sftp/sftp.log.socket /sftp/testuser1/dev/log

And that's it! Now sftp will log everything an sftp user does while connected to your server. Here is a sample of what the logs look like:

Mar 16 15:36:45 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: session opened for local user sftpusername from [192.168.1.10]
Mar 16 15:36:45 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: received client version 3

Mar 16 15:36:45 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: realpath "."
Mar 16 15:37:13 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: lstat name "/"
Mar 16 15:37:13 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: lstat name "/"
Mar 16 15:37:13 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: opendir "/"
Mar 16 15:37:13 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: closedir "/"
Mar 16 15:37:21 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: realpath "/backup"
Mar 16 15:37:21 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: stat name "/backup"
Mar 16 15:37:33 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: lstat name "/backup"
Mar 16 15:37:33 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: lstat name "/backup/"
Mar 16 15:37:33 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: opendir "/backup/"
Mar 16 15:37:33 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: closedir "/backup/"
Mar 16 15:37:37 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: open "/backup/testfile" flags WRITE,CREATE,TRUNCATE mode 0664
Mar 16 15:37:37 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: close "/backup/testfile" bytes read 0 written 288
Mar 16 15:41:45 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: lstat name "/backup"
Mar 16 15:41:45 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: lstat name "/backup/"
Mar 16 15:41:45 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: opendir "/backup/"
Mar 16 15:41:45 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: closedir "/backup/"
Mar 16 15:42:16 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: lstat name "/backup/testfile"
Mar 16 15:42:16 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: remove name "/backup/testfile"
Mar 16 15:42:24 sftpsrvname internal-sftp[2449]: session closed for local user sftpusername from [192.168.1.10]