AUDITD(8)                   System Manager's Manual                  AUDITD(8)

NAME
     auditd – audit log management daemon

DEPRECATION NOTICE
     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.

SYNOPSIS
     auditd [-d | -l]

DESCRIPTION
     The auditd daemon responds to requests from the audit(8) utility and
     notifications from the kernel.  It manages the resulting audit log files
     and specified log file locations.

     The options are as follows:

     -d      Starts the daemon in debug mode — it will not daemonize.

     -l      This option is for when auditd is configured to start on-demand
             using launchd(8).

     Optionally, the audit review group "audit" may be created.  Non-
     privileged users that are members of this group may read the audit trail
     log files.

NOTE
     To assure uninterrupted audit support, the auditd daemon should not be
     started and stopped manually.  Instead, the audit(8) command should be
     used to inform the daemon to change state/configuration after altering
     the audit_control file.

     If auditd is started on-demand by launchd(8) then auditing should only be
     started and stopped with audit(8).

     On Mac OS X, auditd uses the asl(3) API for writing system log messages.
     Therefore, only the audit administrator and members of the audit review
     group will be able to read the system log entries.

FILES
     /var/audit         Default directory for storing audit log files.

     /etc/security      The directory containing the auditing configuration
                        files audit_class(5), audit_control(5),
                        audit_event(5), and audit_warn(5).

COMPATIBILITY
     The historical -h and -s flags are now configured using audit_control(5)
     policy flags ahlt and cnt, and are no longer available as arguments to
     auditd.

SEE ALSO
     asl(3), libauditd(3), audit(4), audit_class(5), audit_control(5),
     audit_event(5), audit_warn(5), audit(8), launchd(8)

HISTORY
     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.

AUTHORS
     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.

macOS 15.2                     December 11, 2008                    macOS 15.2