Re: [logs] Syslog payload format

From: Marcus J. Ranum (mjrat_private)
Date: Thu Dec 19 2002 - 10:32:20 PST

  • Next message: Moyer, Shawn: "RE: [logs] Tamper Proof Logging"

    Darren Reed wrote:
    >initlogging(name,options);
    >logitems[0].type = STRING;
    >logitems[0].value = "marcus login: from";
    >logitems[1].type = HOSTNAME;
    >logitems[1].value = where;
    >addlogmessage(logtype,priority,logitems,2);
    
    This API has problems - mostly because it's exposing
    the internal data structure to programmers who will
    either get it wrong or mess with it. Thus it'd be
    impossible to change the structure in the future. For
    all that the API I was suggesting was butt-ugly, you
    could replace it completely without changing user-land
    code since it's all done through calls rather than
    direct assignments.
    
    >Maybe this is good, maybe it's bad, but it gets away from
    >varargs and is hopefully clear about relationship between type and
    >object data.
    
    Typing log data's a problem I think it's best to ignore.
    Systems aren't going to always have the best information
    and if they can't type it right we need to give them a
    chance to send something else - whatever they have. Which
    means that a lot of this stuff is going to get promoted
    to strings eventually. So you may as well just make it
    official and treat everything as string data since that's
    where it'll wind up. How do you deal with a machine address
    that is variously "amnesiac" 127.0.0.1 "127.0.0.1" and
    "burfle.ranum.com" (not really in DNS) and "www.ranum.com"
    (is in DNS)
    
    Must keep it simple and stupid or it'll be ASN.1 before
    we know what hit us..
    
    mjr. 
    ---
    Marcus J. Ranum				http://www.ranum.com
    Computer and Communications Security	mjrat_private
    
    _______________________________________________
    LogAnalysis mailing list
    LogAnalysisat_private
    http://lists.shmoo.com/mailman/listinfo/loganalysis
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Dec 19 2002 - 19:22:17 PST