RE: Putting a signature on logs

From: Conacher, Christopher (cconacherat_private)
Date: Mon Jul 23 2001 - 08:50:58 PDT

  • Next message: Eoghan Casey: "Re: Where is the data written?"

    march information systems developed a great product for "forensically sound"
    log collection (don't know if it has been used in court) called secure log
    manager.
    
    The product collected logs from UNIX and NT (with NT objects for review),
    encrypted and digitally signed them so that they could not be altered and
    automated their writing to cdrom.
    
    when it was owned by march it was also extremely cheap to cover a whole
    enterprise. MIS was bought by ISS so i am not sure if SLM is still cheap.
    
    see here for more details.
    
    http://www.iss.net/customer_care/resource_center/product_lit/security_assess
    ment/slm_faq.php
    
    chris
    
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Chris Tobkin [mailto:tobkinat_private]
    Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 5:01 PM
    To: n9ubhat_private; Forensics List
    Subject: RE: Putting a signature on logs
    
    
    Actually, I think an easier (and better) way to do this would be either:
    a)	save the logs off at regular intervals to a read-only medium
    (i.e. cdrom)
    b)	take an md5 hash of the file each time you archive it and send
    it to lp (the printer) so you have something physically that directly
    correlates to something digitally -- the similarity of the md5sums show
    that it hasn't been tampered with since you took the hash, but what
    about files that are tampered with before they're archived?
    c)	the best way to see if something has been tampered with is to
    have two copies and compare them.. I've seen this implemented in the
    following manner:
    	- logs are sent to a syslog server unencrypted
    	- IDS or other passive network recorder reads packets off the
    wire destined for the syslog server and saves them to disk
    	- if logs are disputed, they can be dumped out from the passive
    sniffer
    
    Keep in mind, though, that the nature of the digital data beast is that
    it is easily copied and changed.
    
    // Chris
    tobkinat_private
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: David Douthitt [mailto:ssratat_private]
    Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 1:57 PM
    To: Forensics List
    Subject: Putting a signature on logs
    
    
    I've gone to using syslog-ng to keeping logs separated out, and to
    preserve logs for a long time for record purposes.
    
    Now it occurs to me that someone could say, "Gee, how do we know that
    these logs haven't been altered?"
    
    What about a digital signature for each log?  How would you go about
    this?  I was thinking of using gpg (GNU Privacy Guard) but haven't
    gotten far enough to know how - and my reference book is the PGP book
    from O'Reilly and Associates.
    
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