WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-devel

Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Scrub VNC passwords from XenD log files

To: Ewan Mellor <ewan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Scrub VNC passwords from XenD log files
From: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2006 17:16:03 +0000
Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Delivery-date: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 09:16:28 -0800
Envelope-to: www-data@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <20061206122520.GE17323@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
List-help: <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=help>
List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xensource.com>
List-post: <mailto:xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
List-subscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=subscribe>
List-unsubscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=unsubscribe>
References: <20061205193125.GF21067@xxxxxxxxxx> <20061206122520.GE17323@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-to: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Mutt/1.4.1i
On Wed, Dec 06, 2006 at 12:25:20PM +0000, Ewan Mellor wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 05, 2006 at 07:31:25PM +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> 
> > The XendDomainInfo and XendConfig classes both log the guest VM config data
> > to the /var/log/xen/xend.log  in many places. Unfortunately the VNC 
> > passwords
> > are stored in plain text in the guest VM config files. So we end up with 
> > plain text passwords in the xend.log file
> > 
> > Now we can make /var/log/xen  mode 0700 to protect them from local users,
> > but it is very common when debugging issues to request that a user attach
> > the contents of /var/log/xen/xend.log to the bug report ticket, or emails
> > sent to mailing lists. This will obviously compromise any VNC passwords
> > to essentially the while world & his dog. What's more, Google will make 
> > it incredibly easy to search for these too.
> > 
> > 
> > There are a few potential approaches to this
> > 
> >  1. Remove all logging from xend.log
> >  2. Change default log level to only record WARN and higher, so DEBUG
> >     stuff is not recorded normally
> >  3. Scrub the passwords out of the data being logged
> >  4. Do nothing
> > 
> > I really don't like options 1 or 2, because the stuff XenD is logging is
> > actually incredibly helpful when debugging end user problems. 4 is not
> > really a viable option either. So we're left with 3.
> > 
> > Thus I am attaching a prototype patch which scrubs VNC passwords out of
> > the data being logged by XenD.
> 
> That looks good to me -- could I have a Signed-off-by line, so I can apply it?

I didn't add the signed-off-by because the patch isn't finished - I really 
just wanted to see if people were amenable to this kind of approach before
doing more work on it. Since you like it, I'll finish it off shortly - there
just a couple more test cases I need to go through - suspend/restore & inactive
domains - to verify passwords are always scrubbed correctly. I'll post a final
version of the patch by the end of today if all goes to plan.

Regards,
Dan.
-- 
|=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston.  +1 978 392 2496 -=|
|=-           Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/              -=|
|=-               Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/               -=|
|=-  GnuPG: 7D3B9505   F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505  -=| 

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel