Granting CAP_AUDIT_WRITE to X/dbus/...

[Steve Grubb]

On Monday, September 15, 2014 01:20:03 PM Laurent Bigonville wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I was wondering now that the xserver can run as non-root shouldn't the
> CAP_WRITE_AUDIT file capability be set on the Xorg executable?

I can't imagine what the Xserver would need to do with auditing. If its linked 
against libaudit, then I guess it needs it. That said, no one has asked me to 
review what the Xserver is doing wrt auditing. So, I have no idea if its 
actually correctly done.


> Same question for AVC denials logging with dbus session bus[0]?

That one I know needs to write events.


> And in general, does anybody has an opinion about giving this
> capability to $random executable?

Yep, it should be done very cautiously. Some upstreams think audit is a syslog 
and just absolutely mess it up. Even upstreams that I helped get audit events 
working eventually decide to make changes (for who knows what reason) and then 
I find out a year later that they messed things up.

So, if auditing is being added to $random program, be suspicious and ask on 
the list if this is known and correct. I am wanting to fix this by creating 
some test suites that can help identify when programs change and start doing 
the wrong thing.

-Steve


> Cheers,
> 
> Laurent Bigonville
> 
> [0] See: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83856
> 
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