From owner-freebsd-security Sun Jul 19 00:30:23 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA11467 for freebsd-security-outgoing; Sun, 19 Jul 1998 00:30:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from iq.org (proff@polysynaptic.iq.org [203.4.184.222]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id AAA11454 for ; Sun, 19 Jul 1998 00:30:20 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from proff@iq.org) Received: (qmail 1683 invoked by uid 110); 19 Jul 1998 07:29:58 -0000 To: Bruce Schneier cc: coderpunks@toad.com, aucrypto@suburbia.net, cryptography@c2.net, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: cryptographically secure logging From: Julian Assange Date: 19 Jul 1998 17:29:57 +1000 Message-ID: Lines: 28 Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org "Cryptographic Support for Secure Logs on Untrusted Machines" B. Schneier and J. Kelsey, The Seventh USENIX Security Symposium Proceedings, USENIX Press, January 1998, pp. 53-62. In many real-world applications, sensitive information must be kept in log files on an untrusted machine. In the event that an attacker captures this machine, we would like to guarantee that he will gain little or no information from the log files and limit his ability to corrupt the log files. This paper describes an efficient method for making all log entries generated prior to the logging machine's compromise impossible for the attacker to read, and also impossible to undetectably modify or destroy. I haven't read Bruce's paper, but Bruce (and others) might be interested to know that Darren Reed and I have actually implemented one of these for unix. It's also a very flexible syslogd replacement in it's own right (thanks to Darren). It's called nsyslog and is available from http://cheops.anu.edu.au/~avalon/nsyslog.html. It will be included in the default NetBSD distribution (although it should run on most unix platforms). It uses only secure hashes, and essentially does for logs what S/KEY does for authentication. Cheers, Julian. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe security" in the body of the message