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From:   Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace@redhat.com>
Date:   Mon, 17 Sep 2018 14:33:58 +0200
Message-ID: <CAFqZXNt-4NOEimdZXrtAGvNYVm7apNUPnAM=OAp8W+h06Qu65g@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH ghak10 v5 1/2] audit: Add functions to log time adjustments
To:     Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com>
Cc:     Steve Grubb <sgrubb@redhat.com>,
        Miroslav Lichvar <mlichvar@redhat.com>,
        Linux-Audit Mailing List <linux-audit@redhat.com>,
        Richard Guy Briggs <rgb@redhat.com>,
        John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Stephen Boyd <sboyd@kernel.org>,
        Linux kernel mailing list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 5:09 AM Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 9:59 AM Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace@redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 6:38 PM Steve Grubb <sgrubb@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > On Monday, August 27, 2018 5:13:17 AM EDT Ondrej Mosnacek wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 9:50 AM Miroslav Lichvar <mlichvar@redhat.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 02:00:00PM +0200, Ondrej Mosnacek wrote:
> > > > > > This patch adds two auxiliary record types that will be used to
> > > > > > annotate
> > > > > > the adjtimex SYSCALL records with the NTP/timekeeping values that have
> > > > > > been changed.
> > > > >
> > > > > It seems the "adjust" function intentionally logs also calls/modes
> > > > > that don't actually change anything. Can you please explain it a bit
> > > > > in the message?
> > > > >
> > > > > NTP/PTP daemons typically don't read the adjtimex values in a normal
> > > > > operation and overwrite them on each update, even if they don't
> > > > > change. If the audit function checked that oldval != newval, the
> > > > > number of messages would be reduced and it might be easier to follow.
> > > >
> > > > We actually want to log any attempt to change a value, as even an
> > > > intention to set/change something could be a hint that the process is
> > > > trying to do something bad (see discussion at [1]).
> > >
> > > One of the problems is that these applications can flood the logs very
> > > quickly. An attempt to change is not needed unless it fails for permissions
> > > reasons. So, limiting to actual changes is probably a good thing.
> >
> > Well, Richard seemed to "violently" agree with the opposite, so now I
> > don't know which way to go... Paul, you are the official tie-breaker
> > here, which do you prefer?
>
> The general idea is that we only care about *changes* to the system
> state, so if a process is setting a variable to with a value that
> matches it's current value I see no reason why we need to generate a
> change record.
>
> Another thing to keep in mind, we can always change the behavior to be
> more verbose (*always* generate a record, regardless of value) without
> likely causing a regression, but limiting records is more difficult
> and more likely to cause regressions.

OK, that makes sense. I'll limit logging to actual changes in the next revision.

>
> --
> paul moore
> www.paul-moore.com

--
Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace at redhat dot com>
Associate Software Engineer, Security Technologies
Red Hat, Inc.