Hi there!

I'm using Aide to monitor certain directories for changes to the system, and today it came up with the following changes:

Directory: /usr/sbin
Mtime : 2004-11-22 20:12:04 , 2004-11-29 05:50:21
Ctime : 2004-11-22 20:12:04 , 2004-11-29 05:50:21
Directory: /usr/bin
Mtime : 2004-11-22 20:12:04 , 2004-11-29 05:50:21
Ctime : 2004-11-22 20:12:04 , 2004-11-29 05:50:21
Directory: /bin
Mtime : 2004-11-22 20:12:02 , 2004-11-29 05:50:20
Ctime : 2004-11-22 20:12:02 , 2004-11-29 05:50:20


No files have been added or deleted to these directories, or Aide would have
reported that difference. There's no change in permissions, inode, or ownership
as Aide is tracking those too.

No files in the directories have changed either.

The only thing I can figure would cause this change is if a file got added and
then deleted in those directories between the times that aide ran to do its check.
The aide database had not changed either (I track the md5 of the database separately to know whether I need to restore it from backup).

Can anyone think of something else that would cause a change in ctime and mtime
but nothing else?

Any idea what could have done such a thing as add, then delete a file in all three
directories within one second?

Thanks,

Paranoid

What do your logs say if anything and was anyone logged in at those times?

I checked /var/log/messages, and there was nothing happening at the same time there.

I've yet to check any other logs, but no one was logged in and the only things that run on the box with ports open through the firewall are DNS, Apache, Tomcat, and Webmin. Webmin is restricted to a very small set of IP addresses. Telnet never runs on the box. SSH only runs if I go to Webmin and start it up. I then shut it down when I'm done with it.

I'll check other logs and also check for cron jobs running around the time in question.