AUDIT_CLASS(5) File Formats Manual AUDIT_CLASS(5)

audit_classaudit event class descriptions

The audit(4) subsystem has been deprecated since macOS 11.0, disabled since macOS 14.0, and WILL BE REMOVED in a future version of macOS. Applications that require a security event stream should use the EndpointSecurity(7) API instead.

On this version of macOS, you can re-enable audit(4) by renaming or copying /etc/security/audit_control.example to /etc/security/audit_control, re-enabling the system/com.apple.auditd service by running launchctl enable system/com.apple.auditd as root, and rebooting.

The audit_class file contains descriptions of the auditable event classes on the system. Each auditable event is a member of an event class. Each line maps an audit event mask (bitmap) to a class and a description. Entries are of the form:

classmask:eventclass:description

Example entries in this file are:

0x00000000:no:invalid class
0x00000001:fr:file read
0x00000002:fw:file write
0x00000004:fa:file attribute access
0x00000080:pc:process
0x10000000:res:reserved for internal use
0xffffffff:all:all flags set

The audit class res is reserved for internal use. Unentitled applications can still modify the event class preselection mask for an audit event (for example by using the audit_event(5) configuration file or the auditon(2) system call with the A_SETCLASS command), however these applications will not be able to change the res audit class mask for that event.

/etc/security/audit_class
 

audit(4), audit_control(5), audit_event(5), audit_user(5)

The OpenBSM implementation was created by McAfee Research, the security division of McAfee Inc., under contract to Apple Computer Inc. in 2004. It was subsequently adopted by the TrustedBSD Project as the foundation for the OpenBSM distribution.

This software was created by McAfee Research, the security research division of McAfee, Inc., under contract to Apple Computer Inc. Additional authors include Wayne Salamon, Robert Watson, and SPARTA Inc.

The Basic Security Module (BSM) interface to audit records and audit event stream format were defined by Sun Microsystems.

January 24, 2004 macOS 15.2