capable - Trace security capability checks (cap_capable()). capable [-h] [-v] [-p PID] [-K] [-U] This traces security capability checks in the kernel, and prints details for each call. This can be useful for general debugging, and also security enforcement: determining a white list of capabilities an application needs. Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool. CONFIG_BPF, bcc. -h USAGE message.

-v Include non-audit capability checks. These are those deemed not interesting and not necessary to audit, such as CAP_SYS_ADMIN checks on memory allocation to affect the behavior of overcommit.

-K Include kernel stack traces to the output.

-U Include user-space stack traces to the output.

Trace all capability checks system-wide: # capable

Trace capability checks for PID 181: # capable -p 181

TIME(s) Time of capability check: HH:MM:SS.

UID User ID.

PID Process ID.

COMM Process name. CAP Capability number. NAME Capability name. See capabilities(7) for descriptions.

AUDIT Whether this was an audit event. Use -v to include non-audit events.

This adds low-overhead instrumentation to capability checks, which are expected to be low frequency, however, that depends on the application. Test in a lab environment before use. This is from bcc. https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.

Linux Unstable - in development. Brendan Gregg capabilities(7)