Security Issues in Network Event Logging (syslog)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the . It may now be out-of-date.
In addition to this official charter maintained by the IETF Secretariat, there is additional information about this working group on the Web at:

       Additional SYSLOG Page

Last Modified: 2008-03-13

Chair(s):

David Harrington <ietfdbh@comcast.net>
Chris Lonvick <clonvick@cisco.com>

Security Area Director(s):

Tim Polk <tim.polk@nist.gov>
Pasi Eronen <pasi.eronen@nokia.com>

Security Area Advisor:

Pasi Eronen <pasi.eronen@nokia.com>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: syslog@ietf.org
To Subscribe: syslog-request@ietf.org
In Body: in body: (un)subscribe
Archive: http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/syslog/current/index.html

Description of Working Group:

Syslog is a de-facto standard for logging system events. However, the
protocol component of this event logging system has not been formally
documented. While the protocol has been very useful and scalable, it
has some known security problems which were documented in the
INFORMATIONAL RFC 3164.

The goal of this working group is to address the security and integrity
problems, and to standardize the syslog protocol, transport, and a
select set of mechanisms in a manner that considers the ease of
migration between and the co-existence of existing versions and the
standard.

Reviews have shown that there are very few similarities between the
message formats generated by heterogeneous systems. In fact, the only
consistent commonality between messages is that all of them contain
the <PRI> at the start. Additional testing has shown that as long as
the <PRI> is present in a syslog message, all tested receivers will
accept any generated message as a valid syslog message. In designing a
standard syslog message format, this Working Group will retain the
<PRI> at the start of the message and will introduce protocol
versioning. Along these same lines, many different charsets have been
used in syslog messages observed in the wild but no indication of the
charset has been given in any message. The Working Group also feels
that multiple charsets will not be beneficial to the community;
much code would be needed to distinguish and interpret different
charsets. For compatibility with existing implementations, the Working
Group will allow that messages may still be sent that do not indicate
the charset used. However, the Working Group will recommend that
messages contain a way to identify the charset used for the message,
and will also recommend a single default charset.

syslog has traditionally been transported over UDP and this WG has
already defined RFC 3195 for the reliable transport for the syslog
messages. The WG will separate the UDP transport from the protocol so
that others may define additional transports in the future.

The threats that this WG will primarily address are modification,
disclosure, and masquerading. A secondary threat is message stream
modification. Threats that will not be addressed by this WG are DoS and
traffic analysis. The primary attacks may be thwarted by a secure
transport. However, it must be remembered that a great deal of the
success of syslog has been attributed to its ease of implementation and
relatively low maintenance level. The Working Group will consider those
factors, as well as current implementations, when deciding upon a
secure transport. The secondary threat of message stream modification
can be addressed by a mechanism that will verify the end-to-end
integrity and sequence of messages. The Working Group feels that these
aspects may be addressed by a dissociated signature upon sent messages.

- A document will be produced that describes a standardized syslog
protocol. A mechanism will also be defined in this document that will
provide a means to convey structured data.

- A document will be produced that describes a standardized UDP
transport for syslog.

- A document will be produced that requires a secure transport for the
delivery of syslog messages.

- A document will be produced to describe the MIB for syslog entities.

- A document will be produced that describes a standardized mechanism
to sign syslog messages to provide integrity checking and source
authentication.

Goals and Milestones:

Done  Post as an Internet Draft the observed behavior of the Syslog protocol for consideration as an Informational Document.
Done  Submit Syslog protocol document to IESG for consideration as an INFORMATIONAL RFC.
Done  Post as an Internet Draft the specification for an authenticated Syslog for consideration as a Standards Track RFC.
Done  Post an Internet Draft describing enhancements to the Syslog authentication protocol to add verification of delivery and other security services.
Done  Submit Syslog Authentication Protocol Enhancement to IESG for consideration as a PROPOSED STANDARD.
Nov 2006  Submit Syslog Device MIB to IESG for consideration as a PROPOSED STANDARD
Nov 2006  Submit a document that defines a message signing and ordering mechanism to the IESG for consideration as a PROPOSED STANDARD
Done  Submit Syslog UDP Transport Mapping to the IESG for consideration as a PROPOSED STANDARD
Done  Submit Syslog Protocol to the IESG for consideration as a PROPOSED STANDARD
Done  Submit Syslog TLS Transport Mapping to the IESG for consideration as a PROPOSED STANDARD

Internet-Drafts:

  • draft-ietf-syslog-sign-23.txt
  • draft-ietf-syslog-device-mib-17.txt
  • draft-ietf-syslog-protocol-23.txt
  • draft-ietf-syslog-transport-udp-12.txt
  • draft-ietf-syslog-transport-tls-11.txt
  • draft-ietf-syslog-tc-mib-06.txt
  • draft-ietf-syslog-rfc3195bis-00.txt

    Request For Comments:

    RFCStatusTitle
    RFC3164 I The BSD Syslog Protocol
    RFC3195 PS Reliable Delivery for Syslog