AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment) is a popular and powerful tool for monitoring file system changes on a Linux system. It can be used to detect and alert on any unauthorized changes to files, directories, and other system objects. Here are the steps to install and configure AIDE on Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems:
- Install AIDE using the following command:
sudo apt-get install aide
- Initialize the AIDE database:
sudo aideinit
This will create the initial AIDE database that AIDE will use to compare file system changes.
- By default, the AIDE database will be stored in
/var/lib/aide/aide.db.new. You should move this database to a secure location, such as an encrypted file system or external storage. - Once the AIDE database is initialized and moved to a secure location, you can run AIDE to check for file system changes using the following command:
sudo aide --check
This will compare the current state of the file system to the AIDE database and report any changes. You can configure AIDE to send email notifications when changes are detected.
- AIDE can also be configured to run automatically on a schedule using the
cronutility. For example, you can add the following line to the root user’s crontab to run AIDE every day at 3:00 AM:0 3 * * * /usr/bin/aide --check
This will run AIDE at 3:00 AM every day and send email notifications if changes are detected.
AIDE is a powerful tool that can provide an added layer of security to your Linux system. However, it can also generate false positives if not configured correctly. It is important to carefully review the output of AIDE and adjust its configuration as needed to avoid unnecessary alerts.