[redhat-lspp] LSPP Development Telecon 10/30/2006 Minutes

Loulwa Salem loulwas at us.ibm.com
Tue Oct 31 20:23:18 UTC 2006


10/30/2006 lspp Meeting Minutes:
===============================
   Attendees

   George Wilson (IBM) - GW
   Loulwa Salem (IBM) - LS
   Michael Thompson (IBM) - MT
   Joy Latten (IBM) - JL
   Steve Grubb (Red Hat) - SG
   Dan Walsh (Red Hat) - DW
   James Antel (Red Hat) - JA
   Lisa Smith (HP) - LMS
   Linda Knippers (HP) - LK
   Matt Anderson (HP) - MA
   Paul Moore (HP) - PM
   Klaus Weidner (Atsec) - KW
   Darrel Goeddel (TCS) - DG
   Chad Hanson (TCS) - CH

Tentative Agenda:

Pre-Meeting
-----------
     GW: I loaded aide on my lpar, and played with policy a bit
     JA: There is an issue with aide, when you upgrade the library, then the
	relink runs and updates the inodes and c-times, so I am thinking to
	remove that
     KW: It is not important for certification. It is appropriate to rerun to get
	the new baseline if you change software
     JA: I assumed the lspp are patches on top of the rhel5 install
     KW: people tend to upgrade packages and do that at their own risk. But no
	need to worry about this for certification
     GW: so it is fine to remove those
     JA: right
     MA: James, you know if anyone is working on aide policy?
     GW: that would be me, I was discussing it with klaus earlier
     MA: I am almost done working on one
     GW: making it as secadm
     MA: actually using sysadm
     GW: I didn't think about it much, sysadm seems appropriate. what do you want
	to do about var/log, klaus was suggesting we don't need ranged
	directories. How about /var/aide?
     PM: how about /var/db?
     KW: there should not be ranged directories writable by non admins, it is a
	potential information leak.
     MA: I am thinking to have /var/lib/aide at SystemHigh, and var/lib will be
	SystemLow-SystemHigh, so no information leak.
     KW: that will be fine
     JA: that's how it works at the moment
     PM: there will be other programs that are not part of the security target
	that will want to write to /var/lib.
     MA: aide needs to be at systemhigh
     KW: can't expect any general application to work in MLS mode. we don't
	guarantee that.
     GW: yeah, then you'll be getting in services work
     KW: in some cases it is preferable, it is supposed to break programs that
	are not meant to work in MLS mode
     LK: can someone summarize what just got agreed on
     MA: we will have /var/lib/aide in systemhigh and we will have /var/log/aide
     GW: will run by secadm instead of sysadm
     MA: yes, and aide will also run at systemhigh
     GW: you can pass policy by me, and I can help you with that Matt
     MA: great
     GW: I have version of self test working, basically took its guts out and
	replaced it with aide.

Kernel update
-------------
     GW: should we be running .53 kernel with 24 beta refresh
     DG: yes, I am building a kernel and it should be pushed out tomorrow
     KW: is that the one with 20 in file name? heads up it seems to break lvm.
     GW: also newrole is its own package. you need to add that to dependency
	list.
     KW: need to have policycoreutils newrole dependency added. I'll update the
	kickstart also
     DW: policy package will be fixed. I'll put the dependency check in selinux
	policy
     GW: other issues with current beta refresh
     KW: am I supposed to be able to unmount /var/log while audit is running or
	logging? I'll keep looking into that.
     MT: on ppc 32 when calling faccessat, fchmodat, futimesat syscalls, the arg0
	has 32 bit negative value, but subsequent values it has 64 bit value. so
	32 bit record has 64 bit values
     GW: klaus came across a mis-built module, maybe that has something to do
	with what you are seeing Mike.
     KW: yeah, basically the pam was causing segfault in sshd, it turned out that
	pam module was built against a different library than the audit. We
	should figure out why did this happen, and how can we make sure it
	doesn't happen again
     SG: not sure the audit library is the problem
     KW: When I ran it with the debugger, I got 2 different sizes for audit log
	struct.
     SG: ok, I think I know what you are talking about. have you seen problems
	with shadow utils, or password
     KW: This was the only thing I noticed. Most of the fields at the beginning
	are not affected. it seems only what uses the union is affected
     SG: did you close the bug?
     KW: still open, it is fixed for me now, but I want to know what is happening
     SG: you have bugzilla number?
     KW: it is an issue tracker (104436)
     SG: I'll find out what is going on with that, seems we need to build 6 or 7
	packages
     KW: we need to be checking this.
     GW: It is not something we want to have to explain to the evaluator, that
	things can break and be undetected.
     SG: I'll find out what is going on, and get it to bugzilla.
     KW: Another issue is how stable the binary api is for audit, this might
	affect fedora, just heads up, it is not relevant for the evaluation
     GW: ok, other issues with beta?

Beta / Rawhide
--------------

SELinux base update
-------------------
     GW: Dan, any policy updates?
     DW: big thing I'm  working on is the cron fix. stephen smalley and I are
	discussing how to fix it and james antel is working on the multilevel
	logging capability. we are also adding policy fixes as well.
     GW: sorry that discussion got pulled off the list
     DW: my fault, should have noticed. Also, now that fc6 is out, we have lots
	of policy fixes coming in, so I am wrapped up in that stuff
     LK: So is the cron conversation back on list? I am still catching up on
	email, is there a place to catch up on that
     DW: main thing is that we don't want to set TE capabilities inside that
	application. We want to set MLS level and check to make sure are valid
	for the machine. Right now the current cron theoretically allows you to
	change SELinux type and role. what I want to do is pull TE stuff out of
	it and leave MLS only. stephen smalley has concerns bout trojans running
	at different levels
     KW: if the goal is lspp compliance, no need to have crond with full
	functionality; as long as it is not insecure, it doesn't need to have
	full functionality. As plan B it is ok to have restricted version, or
	even turn it off completely for the evaluation.
     DW: we will have it run at one level.
     KW: Ok, I just wanted to clarify, so people don't think we need something
	complex for evaluation.
     LK: you will specify what level to use with cron?
     DW: yes. Everyone make sure you get a look at policy too. we will get it to
	upstream packaging

MLS policy issues
------------------

Newrole & VFS polyinstantiation
---------------------
     GW: what's the status on this Mike?
     MT: as it was last week, I waited to see if anyone had any input, but there
	has been no activity. I'll implement the -p option anyway since people
	seems to want it. I am modeling it after su, so I'll add that and send
	patches out again. I don't have a time frame, but sometime this week
     GW: anyone had a chance to test james antel's pam module?
     JA: The actual final patches limit MLS ranges in correct way, but they only
	went out 1 hour or 2 ago.
     GW: should I pull that out of your people page?
     JA: I posted to the mailing list three patches, one against MLS reference
	policy, one against libselinux and one against pam. I'll put srpms on my	 
webpage late today or tomorrow.
     GW: don't know if I'll have time to patch and rebuild, so maybe I'll wait
	for the rpms from you.
     JA: stephen need to still sign off on them. if anyone can look at patches
	and see how it's been done.
     GW: absolutely, I was trying to get klaus to look at them and see how they
	work.

PTY leakage
------------

Audit userspace
---------------
     GW: Anything on audit Steve?
     SG: last week, I was able to release version 1.2.9 and it was pulled into
	the beta.
     GW: Ok, I'll keep this item on the agenda until we don't have discussion on
	it

Print
------
     MA: Once I get the patch out today, print should be all set.

CIPSO
------
     GW: how is that looking
     PM: there is a little bit of discussion about setsockapp. I put a patch out,
	and it was pulled in very quickly.

IPsec
------
     JL: I ran stress tests, and it looked ok on not labeled
     GW: so MLS labels look sane
     JL: yes, my next step is testing the MLs labels
     SG: I sent feedback about ipsec audit for kernel this morning
     JL: Oh, I didn't see it.
     SG: basically, it looks good only few things that need changing. the main
	thing is secid needs to be captured out of the netlink and now it seems
	propagated with audit id
     JL: Joshua asked about racoon patches upstream. I am working on that
     GW: when do you expect them to be accepted upstream
     JL: I don't know. I am trying to break them into smaller patches. I broke it
	up before, but maybe that was not enough, so I am breaking it down 	
	further.
     GW: you are upstreaming patches that are already in beta ... right?
     JL: yes
     GW: Ok, just checking. How are things with TCS?
     DG: venkat asked about one small issue, I think he sent a question to the
	list. He is working on few last pieces to get the base MLs transform
	stuff as opposed to the secid stuff. that's almost done
     GW: when do we expect to have a kernel with all ipsec stuff in it?
     DG: venkat didn't give me a time, so I am not too sure, but I can't think
	there is much to do considering where he is at. I'll ask him tomorrow
	morning.


Labeled networking stabilization
--------------------------------

xinetd
-------
     GW: Is there still an xinetd bug, or has that been put into beta? any
	updates?
     SG: no, forgot about that, I'll take a look at it again.

Self tests
-----------
     GW: Matt and I have been playing with aide. Matt has policy, we'll work
	together to get that going. I ripped the guts out of self tests and
	replaced it with aide, in addition to aide, they check if selinux is
	enabeld and audit records are generated. If folks have additional
	things they want added, let me know. it seems this is more of a ticky
	mark for the evaluation.
     SG: aide doesn't come with any cron scripts at all, so self tests can get in
	and kick it off. they don't want it running with cron jobs so someone
	can't get in the machine and change it. self tests can have cron job and
	kick it off since aide doesn't come with any cron scripts
     GW: it seems heavy weight, so you might not want to run it very often
     SG: I think you want to use audit system for some of the work it is doing,
	if something changed, keep track of who did it; audit system should have
	that info.
     GW: true, particularly if sending audit records to another machine, would be
	most useful. Ok, we'll hammer out policy for that and try running test
	through cron job. Not sure if anyone cares about checking things against
	rpm.
     SG: for aide, we'll document that you need to turn pre-link off.
     GW: once you set up evaluation, you can't upgrade packages at any time
     KW: or you do that at your own risk
     JA: problem was when you run pre-link and even it it doesn't change binary,
	the c-time of inode changes.
     KW: couldn't pre-link be fixed to not do that
     GW: seems like the right answer
     JA: probably yes.
     GW: alright, so I'll play with it some more, and we can get something useful
	out of this and get it done in near term
     MA: dan, you know where aide policy should live
     DW: it runs as service?
     MA: no, not a service.
     DW: I would put it in admin for now.

Cron, tmpwatch, mail, etc.
---------------------------

Bugs / remaining tasks
----------------------
     KW: there is an interface for creating users, haven't gotten feedback on
	that.
     DW: I put fixes for that today, should be in rawhide tonight. I have not
	tested it, but I put the missing pieces back in.
     KW: apparently there are 2 problems in beta, mount_t can't mount on
	var_log_t. The other serious issue is that I can unmount /var/log while
	programs are running on /var/log. if you tail on auditlog it says it is
	busy while I am unmounting. auditd, syslogd, and cups are using that
	partition, and I can still unmount it
     SG: are you on polyinstantiated directory.
     KW: my bad, I need to get used to that. ok that explains
     GW: so you can unmount it in your namespace?
     DW: so at some point var/log was unmountable and now it is?
     KW: 2 issues. I added a fix to make it mounted. other issue is because it is
	in different namespace, I can unmount it. It is just not expected, if
	you ssh in and change to root, you can unmount.
     MT: basically you are making changes that affect you only rather than the
	system at whole.
     KW: if you ssh in and mount a CD, it can only be visible in the current
	namespace.
     MT: if you log in as root, then make changes, they'll be system wide.
     SG: I though there was a change added to ...
     KW: if you are already in another namespace you can't do anything to affect
	your parent namespace or other namespaces
     GW: can we make the ssh session affect all namespaces
     KW: should be easy to add .. sorry about confusing people, but didn't expect
	this behavior based on namespace
     DW: are there any other directories you expect by default to be able to
	mount on top off
     KW: I just didn't expect this
     DW: there is a boolean that says you can mount over anything...
     KW: I think /var/log/audit dir would also make sense
     DW: we already have that
     KW: and /var is also popular.
     GW: any other general issues?
     LG: when will you post patch for lspp for cron
     DW: will post patch in another week
     LMS: is this for the vixie cron package
     DW: yes, it'll decide if it is legal for the user
     LMS: was wondering how this mechanism will work
     DW: same mechanism of how you log in and try to newrole
     LMS:when you put the command in, then it'll make all the changes?
     DW: It will not change the crontab, when the job actually runs, then it'll
	do the check. better to check when job runs, rather than when created,
	since context could have changed by then.
     DW: I'll send a list of all current mount points to the list
     KW: I think it is better to have the boolean be turned off and allow all
	mounts, since it is not well documented
     DW: so allow all mounts on anything
     MA: is this on targeted or MLs
     DW: they are a bit different. problem with mount, you can mount files on top
	of files, so you'll end up with mount working on anything
     KW: maybe you can approach this differently, when you install with
	partitioning info, you expect it to be as it is without having to change
	types
     DW: sounds like an enhancement
     GW: I think it is a bug
     KW: I think when you mount, you would expect it to be correct and be able to
	mount, so I would think it is a bug.
     DW: I can file it against anaconda, but I think they'll send it back to me.
     GW: any other issues to bring forward?
     KW: Well, in kickstart script, is there a way to tell it to not ask question
	about install keys.
     MA: I don't think we are install script experts. speaking of keys, do you
	think the import done by rpms should be auditable
     GW: not as part of the evaluated certification
     KW: but in evaluation you are not running rpm. I don't think this is an
	issues. Beyond the scope of lspp, you shouldn't be installing packages
	even from the RedHat site
     SG: I just wanted to check if rpm importing keys was ok,
     MA: if rpm is importing keys automatically, then you should file a bug about
	that probably.
     GW: I agree with Matt, it usually asks me about the keys.
     KW: I think there is some config option in the repos.conf file
     GW: ok, anything else? alright we'll adjourn. thank you all

Final cutoff date
------------------




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