Re: [RFC PATCH ghak10 v3 0/3] audit: Log modifying adjtimex(2) calls

On Wednesday, July 18, 2018 2:36:11 PM EDT Paul Moore wrote: > > 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. > > Looking at these new records, and trying to guess a bit at the > original intent of the feature request, I think we may be going a bit > overboard with the information we are logging. I'm thinking all we > really need to capture in the audit log is the system time both before > and after the change (for the sake of simplicity I suggest using a > data format similar to the audit record timestamp). > > While I created the GH issue for this, I believe the original request > came from a Red Hat BZ that Steve created; Steve, what sort of > certification requirements (if any?) are there for logging system time > changes? That we record any attempts to change the system time. The problem is that adjtimex passes a data structure that is opaque to user space. So, we can't tell if someone is setting time, adjusting a tolerance, or simply retrieving status. With stime, we can clearly see the time that was sent into the kernel and it unconditionally sets time. With settimeofday, it uses a data structure that we cannot see, but whatever the contents are we are definitely setting time. Same goes for clock_settime. Only in 1 case do we actually see what the time is. So, that is not really needed. So, I think what we need to know is did the syscall do anything that adjusted the system's notion of time? And that's all.