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Capture MAC address in QAUDJRN with QAUDLVL *NETSCK

See this idea on ideas.ibm.com

The *NETSCK audit level already provide information about socket connections made to the IBM i server, which includes from-and-to-IP-addresses. However, it does not capture the MAC address from where the socket request comes from. The reason why this will add value, is that in an environment whereby everybody links to the server via DHCP, the IP address cannot be used as a means to track that a specific user profile logged in to an IBM i session, from a specific PC, since the IP might change again. Collecting the MAC address will provide visibility as to which PC/Laptop a specific user was logged onto. The idea behind this visibility is that, from an audit point of view, I would like to see if there was a connection from a specific computer, for a specific user profile. I can probably build an exit program that can collect that information, but an auditor might reject the evidence, if it was not collected by a system process.

Idea priority Low
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    Oct 18, 2022
    Thank you for taking the time to submit your Idea. While we see the benefit of having the client's MAC address logged for incoming connections, the only way that the MAC address would be for the PC connecting is if it was on a local network. The MAC address does not flow end-to-end through the network, so if the connecting PC is not on the local network, the sender's MAC address that the IBM i server would see is for the local router. In order to map the IP to a MAC address, it would require information from the DHCP server logs to do the mapping over time and the DHCP server is not necessarily even on the local system. For these reasons we are declining the request.

    IBM Power Systems Development