missing avc message field names

Karl MacMillan kmacmillan at mentalrootkit.com
Mon Jan 29 19:43:00 UTC 2007


Eamon Walsh wrote:
> Steve G wrote:
>>> If you have to include code for parsing the current format, why the 
>>> rush to change the kernel output?
>>>     
>>
>> I was thinking that it should be done in near future so its not 
>> forgotten. But
>> that is the only reason. It could be delayed for a while.
>>
>> But back to the original question, any preference for non-conflicting 
>> names? :)
>>
>>
>>   
> CC'ing linux-audit.
> 
> Some comments regarding userspace object managers and the userspace AVC: 
> in general userspace object managers will introduce new fields to the 
> AVC messages.  For example the AVC's generated by the X server have 
> fields such as window=, property=, and extension= for X-specific things 
> which do not appear in the kernel AVC's.  So it should be relatively 
> easy to add new keywords to the dictionary, or even have the audit 
> system gracefully accept keywords that are not in its dictionary.
> 

Good point - as long as there are userspace generated audit messages it 
will be hard to enforce uniqueness.

> If all of these keywords in the data dictionary have to be unique, I'm 
> wondering if it might be useful to use a 3-tuple instead of a 
> (name,value) pair.  The 3-tuple would consist of (namespace,name,value) 
> with namespace coming from a defined list of subsystems.  So for example 
> there would be an "SELinux" namespace encompassing all of the selinux 
> keywords, so that the "result" and "perms" keywords from the previous 
> example would not conflict with the "other" ones which would presumably 
> be in a different namespace.  Or just prefix the names with "selinux-", 
> "syscall-", etc.
> 

The prefixes seems simpler and match with the current audit messages 
more closely.

Karl




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