(forw) Re: [PATCH] LSM hooks for audit

[Serge E. Hallyn]

----- Forwarded message from Serge Hallyn <serue at us.ibm.com> -----

From: Serge Hallyn <serue at us.ibm.com>
To: Crispin Cowan <crispin at immunix.com>
Message-Id: <1095258766.5294.28.camel at serge.austin.ibm.com>
X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.5 
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 09:32:46 -0500
Cc: LSM <linux-security-module at wirex.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] LSM hooks for audit

Sorry, on a second look I notice the descriptions in security.h are far
less helpful than I'd thought!

The new hooks allow an LSM to refuse a process the ability to:

   view a list of audit rules
   add to the list of audit rules
   delete an audit rule
   set audit parameters (ie enable/disable audit, rate limit, etc)
   create a 'login' audit record.

The last one is the most dubious one in my mind, but we do want to
prevent a user from sending fake login audit messages, either to mislead
the auditor or to fill the log with garbage.

Note that the audit code (kernel/audit.c and kernel/auditsc.c) is in the
kernel now.  This patch only allows LSMs to restrict processes'
interaction with the audit subsystem.  At the moment, some of this
interaction depends upon CAP_SYS_ADMIN, and some (like listing the audit
rules) is always allowed.

-serge

On Wed, 2004-09-15 at 08:01, Crispin Cowan wrote:
> Serge Hallyn wrote:
> 
> >Attached is a patch which provides LSM controls over actions related to
> >the new audit framework.  As a specific example, we might like to have
> >an "audit role", enabled by selinux or some other LSM, which would be
> >the only role allowed to add or delete filter rules.
> >
> >What do people think about adding these hooks, both in general and these
> >hooks specifically?
> >  
> >
> LSM is about enabling policy modules, not imposing policy. Glancing 
> through the patch, it appears to put audit-specific stuff into LSM. I 
> would rather see appropriate hook placement so that an audit module (or 
> an audit-aware module) could be created, but without imposing 
> audit-specific semantics on the hooks.
> 
> But then again, I'm just guessing at what the patch does based on 
> variable names :) Can you post a description of what the patch does?
> 
> Crispin
-- 
=======================================================
Serge Hallyn
Security Software Engineer, IBM Linux Technology Center
serue at us.ibm.com

----- End forwarded message -----