#!/usr/bin/perl open(IN, '/var/log/messages'); @buffer = <IN>; close IN; foreach $line (@buffer) { if ($line =~ /authentication failure/) { $line =~ /^([a-zA-Z]{3} [ 0-9]+ [0-9:]*).*logname=([a-zA-Z0-9]*).*user= ([a-zA-Z0-9]*)$/; print "$2 attempted to log in as $3 on $1\n"; } }