Bug 541040
| Summary: | Enable logging in PolicyKit (for policy changes and for authorizations.) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Fedora] Fedora | Reporter: | Matthew Miller <mattdm> |
| Component: | polkit | Assignee: | David Zeuthen <davidz> |
| Status: | CLOSED NEXTRELEASE | QA Contact: | Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa> |
| Severity: | medium | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | low | ||
| Version: | rawhide | CC: | davidz, mclasen, sgrubb, tmraz |
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
| Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | 2010-02-15 21:37:28 UTC | Type: | --- |
| Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
| Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
| Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
| oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
| Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
| Embargoed: | |||
I should add that the work to do this is both not terribly complex and not terribly thrilling. My daughter is at home with the swine flu and I'm watching her, which isn't, what with the lethargy and all, a terribly demanding task. So I may have time to work on a first cut. Unless someone _else_ is really excited about this and wants to beat me to it. :) So one thing that occurs to me as soon as I start poking at the code -- it's relatively easy to have it emit a log message when a policy file is changed, but this is largely useless because there's no way to verify the policy state _at startup_. So I think it's probably better to leave that aspect to more traditional tools for monitoring file changes. I should add that on Linux, the only authoritative access log is the audit system. This is because syslog has no integrity guarantees. So, any access decisions should probably go to the audit system which requires CAP_AUDIT_WRITE. Pam already logs to the audit system. Logging has been added in polkit 0.96, which will appear in F13. |
One of the important features of sudo is its ability to log elevated-access actions to syslog. Userhelper similarly logs actions taken as other (usually root) users. PolicyKit serves a similar function (in a nice, modern way), but doesn't seem to log anything. Additionally, since PolicyKit's LocalAuthority is already monitoring for new pkla files, it's in a good place to log changes to policy -- something we don't have with sudo or userhelper/PAM. So, there's two aspects. First, PolicyKit's LocalAuthority monitors its configuration directories for changes. When a file is added, removed, or changed, a auth.warning message should be logged. Details of the change should be logged as well, but at a lower level (auth.info, probably). Second, when PolicyKit grants authorization for a specific action, it should log that event. The basic action should be authpriv.notice (in keeping with sudo and userhelper). This would look something like: polkit-1[1111]: allowing action "org.libvirt.unix.manage" for process 222 for identity "unix-user:mattdm" or polkit-1[1111]: DENYING action "org.libvirt.unix.manage" for process 222 with identity "unix-user:mattdm" (Or similar -- details, details.) A more verbose log level (authpriv.info, maybe) should log the authentication type requested (auth_admin, auth_self). And a yet-more-verbose level (authpriv.debug) should log Authority-specific configuration/diagnostic information, like the pkla or policy file from which the authorization came. There are four particular strengths I see to logging this information at the PolicyKit level rather than just the client application level. 1) Existing applications don't need to be changed, and new applications don't need to be counted on to do the right thing. Appropriate logging just starts happening. In general, having logging of security-elevation events in the lowest-common-denominator piece of code keeps important information from getting lost due to insufficient logging in a calling app¹. 2) Log levels and debugging are easier to admin because there's a central configuration (and PolicyKit already has config files). If I need to turn on more authentication debugging, I don't have to hunt down app-specific options. 3) Log messages are automatically consistent between programs, making analysis and monitoring much easier. 4) PolicyKit is in a position to log more about the decisions it makes than is (or should be) exposed to the client application. This can be particularly useful for debugging but may also be useful for auditing. If a user was allowed access for a certain reason, and that reason turns out to be something they shouldn't have access to but do, we can know to investigate. Client applications should also be encouraged (perhaps even in the PolicyKit documentation) to use syslog to log their elevated-privilege actions -- just as PolicyKit knows details about the authorization that the application can't, the application knows details about what it's doing with the authorization that PolicyKit just doesn't care about. Since this is a security/auditing issue, it's never wrong to error on the side of more logging. ---- 1. This bit paraphrased from a comment from Seth Vidal.