Re: [RFC PATCH ghak10 v6 0/2] audit: Log changes that can affect the system clock

From: Ondrej Mosnacek
Date: Mon Apr 01 2019 - 05:21:32 EST


On Thu, Mar 28, 2019 at 12:00 AM Paul Moore <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 10:50 AM Paul Moore <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 7:33 AM Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > This patchset implements auditing of (syscall-triggered) changes that
> > > can modify or indirectly affect the system clock. Some of these
> > > changes can already be detected by simply logging relevant syscalls,
> > > but this has some disadvantages:
> > > a) It is usually not possible to find out from the syscall records
> > > the amount by which the time was shifted.
> > > b) Syscalls like adjtimex(2) or clock_adjtime(2) can be used also
> > > for read-only operations, which might flood the audit log with
> > > false positives. (Note that these patches don't solve this
> > > problem yet due to the limitations of current record filtering
> > > capabilities.)
> > >
> > > The main motivation is to provide better reliability of timestamps
> > > on the system as mandated by the FPT_STM.1 security functional
> > > requirement from Common Criteria. This requirement apparently demands
> > > that it is possible to reconstruct from audit trail the old and new
> > > values of the time when it is adjusted (see [1]).
> > >
> > > The current version of the patchset logs the following changes:
> > > - direct setting of system time to a given value
> > > - direct injection of timekeeping offset
> > > - adjustment of timekeeping's TAI offset
> > > - NTP value adjustments:
> > > - time_offset
> > > - time_freq
> > > - time_status
> > > - time_adjust
> > > - tick_usec
> > >
> > > Changes to the following NTP values are not logged, as they are not
> > > important for security:
> > > - time_maxerror
> > > - time_esterror
> > > - time_constant
> > >
> > > Audit kernel GitHub issue: https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-kernel/issues/10
> > > Audit kernel RFE page: https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-kernel/wiki/RFE-More-detailed-auditing-of-changes-to-system-clock
> > >
> > > Testing: Passed audit-testuite; functional tests TBD
> > >
> > > Changes in v6:
> > > - Reorganized the patches to group changes by record type, not
> > > kernel subsytem, as suggested in earlier discussions
> > > - Added checks to ignore no-change events (new value == old value)
> > > - Added TIME_INJOFFSET logging also to do_settimeofday64() to cover
> > > syscalls such as settimeofday(2), stime(2), clock_settime(2)
> > > - Created an RFE page on audit-kernel GitHub
> > > TODO:
> > > - tests for audit-testsuite
> > >
> > > v5: https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-audit/2018-August/msg00039.html
> > > Changes in v5:
> > > - Dropped logging of some less important changes and update commit messages
> > > - No longer mark the patchset as RFC
> > >
> > > v4: https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-audit/2018-August/msg00023.html
> > > Changes in v4:
> > > - Squashed first two patches into one
> > > - Renamed ADJNTPVAL's "type" field to "op" to align with audit record
> > > conventions
> > > - Minor commit message editing
> > > - Cc timekeeping/NTP people for feedback
> > >
> > > v3: https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-audit/2018-July/msg00001.html
> > > Changes in v3:
> > > - Switched to separate records for each variable
> > > - Both old and new value is now reported for each change
> > > - Injecting offset is reported via a separate record (since this
> > > offset consists of two values and is added directly to the clock,
> > > i.e. it doesn't make sense to log old and new value)
> > > - Added example records produced by chronyd -q (see the commit message
> > > of the last patch)
> > >
> > > v2: https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-audit/2018-June/msg00114.html
> > > Changes in v2:
> > > - The audit_adjtime() function has been modified to only log those
> > > fields that contain values that are actually used, resulting in more
> > > compact records.
> > > - The audit_adjtime() call has been moved to do_adjtimex() in
> > > timekeeping.c
> > > - Added an additional patch (for review) that simplifies the detection
> > > if the syscall is read-only.
> > >
> > > v1: https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-audit/2018-June/msg00095.html
> > >
> > > [1] https://www.niap-ccevs.org/MMO/PP/pp_ca_v2.1.pdf -- section 5.1,
> > > table 4
> > >
> > > Ondrej Mosnacek (2):
> > > timekeeping: Audit clock adjustments
> > > ntp: Audit NTP parameters adjustment
> > >
> > > include/linux/audit.h | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > > include/uapi/linux/audit.h | 2 ++
> > > kernel/auditsc.c | 15 +++++++++++++++
> > > kernel/time/ntp.c | 38 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
> > > kernel/time/timekeeping.c | 6 ++++++
> > > 5 files changed, 82 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> >
> > These patches look fine to me, but it would be really nice to get an
> > ACK from the time folks before I merge this into audit/next. Time
> > folks, I know you've looked at previous versions of this patchset, can
> > you give this a quick look to make sure everything is still okay from
> > your perspective?
>
> Ondrej, please don't let the lack of response from the time folks keep
> you from working on the tests. If you can get the tests ready in
> time, I see no reason why this couldn't get merged before the next
> merge window.

Sure, I already have them about 50% done. I hope to have them finished
sometime this week.

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