On Wednesday, February 5, 2020 5:50:28 PM EST Paul Moore wrote:

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... When we record the audit container ID in audit_signal_info() we
take an extra reference to the audit container ID object so that it
will not disappear (and get reused) until after we respond with an
AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2.  In audit_receive_msg() when we do the
AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2 processing we drop the extra reference we took
in
audit_signal_info().  Unless I'm missing some other change you
made,
this *shouldn't* affect the syscall records, all it does is
preserve
the audit container ID object in the kernel's ACID store so it
doesn't
get reused.

This is exactly what I had understood.  I hadn't considered the extra
details below in detail due to my original syscall concern, but they
make sense.

The syscall I refer to is the one connected with the drop of the
audit container identifier by the last process that was in that
container in patch 5/16.  The production of this record is contingent
on
the last ref in a contobj being dropped.  So if it is due to that ref
being maintained by audit_signal_info() until the AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2
record it fetched, then it will appear that the fetch action closed
the
container rather than the last process in the container to exit.

Does this make sense?

More so than your original reply, at least to me anyway.

It makes sense that the audit container ID wouldn't be marked as
"dead" since it would still be very much alive and available for use
by the orchestrator, the question is if that is desirable or not.  I
think the answer to this comes down the preserving the correctness of
the audit log.

If the audit container ID reported by AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2 has been
reused then I think there is a legitimate concern that the audit log
is not correct, and could be misleading.  If we solve that by grabbing
an extra reference, then there could also be some confusion as
userspace considers a container to be "dead" while the audit container
ID still exists in the kernel, and the kernel generated audit
container ID death record will not be generated until much later (and
possibly be associated with a different event, but that could be
solved by unassociating the container death record).

How does syscall association of the death record with AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2
possibly get associated with another event?  Or is the syscall
association with the fetch for the AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2 the other event?

The issue is when does the audit container ID "die".  If it is when
the last task in the container exits, then the death record will be
associated when the task's exit.  If the audit container ID lives on
until the last reference of it in the audit logs, including the
SIGNAL_INFO2 message, the death record will be associated with the
related SIGNAL_INFO2 syscalls, or perhaps unassociated depending on
the details of the syscalls/netlink.

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Another idea might be to bump the refcount in audit_signal_info() but
mark tht contid as dead so it can't be reused if we are concerned that
the dead contid be reused?

Ooof.  Yes, maybe, but that would be ugly.

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There is still the problem later that the reported contid is incomplete
compared to the rest of the contid reporting cycle wrt nesting since
AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2 will need to be more complex w/2 variable length
fields to accommodate a nested contid list.

Do we really care about the full nested audit container ID list in the
SIGNAL_INFO2 record?

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Of the two
approaches, I think the latter is safer in that it preserves the
correctness of the audit log, even though it could result in a delay
of the container death record.

I prefer the former since it strongly indicates last task in the
container.  The AUDIT_SIGNAL_INFO2 msg has the pid and other subject
attributes and the contid to strongly link the responsible party.

Steve is the only one who really tracks the security certifications
that are relevant to audit, see what the certification requirements
have to say and we can revisit this.

Sever Virtualization Protection Profile is the closest applicable standard

https://www.niap-ccevs.org/Profile/Info.cfm?PPID=408&id=408

It is silent on audit requirements for the lifecycle of a VM. I assume that 
all that is needed is what the orchestrator says its doing at the high level. 
So, if an orchestrator wants to shutdown a container, the orchestrator must 
log that intent and its results. In a similar fashion, systemd logs that it's 
killing a service and we don't actually hook the exit syscall of the service 
to record that.

Now, if a container was being used as a VPS, and it had a fully functioning 
userspace, it's own services, and its very own audit daemon, then in this 
case it would care who sent a signal to its auditd. The tenant of that 
container may have to comply with PCI-DSS or something else. It would log the 
audit service is being terminated and systemd would record that its tearing 
down the environment. The OS doesn't need to do anything.

-Steve