stealth

stealth_3.00.00.tar.gz

2005-2014


stealth(1)

stealth(1)

stealth_3.00.00.tar.gz Security Enhancement

2005-2014

NAME

stealth - Stealthy File Integrity Scanner

SYNOPSIS

stealth --daemon pidfile --dry-run --log <path> --logmail
--max-size <size>[BKMG] --no-mail --parse-policy-file
--random-interval <seconds> --repeat <seconds>
--run-command <nr> --skip-files <path> --stdout --syslog
--syslog-facility <fac> --syslog-priority <pri> --syslog-tag <tag>
--verbosity <value> policy

stealth {--reload,--rerun,--resume,--suspend,--terminate} pidfile

stealth --help --version

DESCRIPTION

The name of the stealth program is an acronym of:

SSH-based Trust Enforcement Acquired through a Locally Trusted Host.
stealth is based on an idea by Hans Gankema and Kees Visser, both at the Center for Information Technology of the University of Groningen. Hopko Meijering provided valuable suggestions for improvement.

stealth's main task is to perform file integrity tests. However, the testing itself will leave no sediments on the tested computer. Therefore, stealth has stealthy characteristics. This is considered an important feature, improving the security (integrity) of the software of computers monitored by stealth.

On the other hand, one should realize that stealth intends to be just another security tool: other security measures like firewalls, portscanners, intrusion detection systems, dropping unencrypted protocols, etc. are usually required to improve or promote the security of a group of computers that are connected to the Internet.

stealth uses a policy file to determine the actions to perform. Each policy file is uniquely associated with a host to be tested. This host (called the client below) trusts the computer on which stealth runs, called the controller (hence: a Locally Trusted Host). The controller performs tasks (normally file integrity tests) that Enforce the Trust we have in the client computer. Since almost all integrity tests can be run on the client, one controller can control many clients, even if the controller itself uses aged hard- and software components.

As the controller and the client normally are different computers, the controller must communicate with the client in a secure fashion. This is realized using SSH. So, there's another element of `local trust' involved here: the client should permit the controller to set up a secure SSH connection allowing the controller to access sensitive files and private parts of the client's file system.

It is important to ensure that there is no public access to the controller. All inbound services should be denied. The only access to the controller should be via its console and the controller should be placed in a physically secure location. Sensitive information of clients are stored in the controller, and passwordless access to clients can be obtained from the controller by anyone who gains (root)-access.

The controller itself normally only uses two kinds of outgoing services: SSH to reach its clients, and some mail transport agent (e.g., sendmail(1)) to forward its outgoing mail to some mail-hub.

Here is what happens when stealth is run using the first synopsis:

REPORT FILE ROTATION

Since stealth only appends information to the report file, the report file's size may eventually become prohibitively large, and log-rotation may be desirable. It is of course possible to issue a --terminate command, rotate the logfiles, and restart stealth, but stealth also offers a facility to temporarily suspend integrity scans performed by a stealth daemon process: Here is an example of logrotate(1) specification rotating stealth log-files:
/root/stealth/host/report {
    weekly
    rotate 12
    compress
    missingok
    prerotate
        /usr/bin/stealth --suppress /run/stealth.host
    endscript
    postrotate
        /usr/bin/stealth --resume /run/stealth.host
    endscript 
}

RELOAD, RERUN AND TERMINATE

Here is what happens when stealth is run using the second synopsis:

OPEN SSH LINK TO CLIENTS

Once stealth is started as a foreground or daemon process performing file integrity scans one one ssh(1) connection is opened to the client. This connection remains active during stealth's lifetime to minimize the number of sshd entries caused by stealth in the client's log files.

THE POLICY FILE

The policy file consists of two sections, the second section is optional, and starts at a line merely containing %%.

The policy file's first section consists of two sets of data: use directives (starting with the keyword USE) and commands. Blank lines and information beyond hash-marks (#) are ignored, while lines following lines terminating in backslashes (\) are concatenated (en passant removing these trailing backslashes). Initial white space on lines of the policy file is ignored.

The (optional) second section starts at a line merely containing %%. Following this separating line long option specifications can be entered (see below at section OPTIONS).

DEFINE DIRECTIVES

DEFINE directives are used to associate longer strings of text with certain symbols. E.g., after DEFINE FINDARGS -xdev -type f -exec /usr/bin/sha1sum {} \; the specification ${FINDARGS} may be used in USE DIRECTIVES and commands (see below) to use the text associated with the FINDARGS symbol.

Note that DEFINE symbols may also be used in the definition of other DEFINE symbols as well. Direct or indirect circular definitions should be avoided, as they are either not or incompletely expanded.

USE DIRECTIVES

The following USE directives may be specified (directives are written in capitals, and should appear exactly as written below: letter casing is preserved). Specifications in angular brackets (like <this>) represent specifications to be provided by stealth's users:

In some installations stealth is used to inspect the computer itself, even though this is not recommended, as it breaks one of the main reasons for stealth's existence. In situations where stealth is used to monitor the integrity of the localhost, /bin/bash could be specified with the USE SSH directive. For example:

    # For stealth inspecting localhost:
        USE SSH /bin/bash --noprofile

COMMANDS

Following the USE specifications, commands can be specified. The commands are executed in their order of appearance in the policy file. Processing continues until the last command has been processed or until a tested command (see below) returns a non-zero return value.

LABEL COMMANDS

The following LABEL commands are available:

LOCAL COMMANDS

LOCAL commands are executed on the controller itself:

Note that the scp(1) command can be used to copy files between the client and the controller, using a local command. This, however, is discouraged, as a separate ssh(1)-connection is required for each separate scp(1) command. This subtlety was brought to the author's attention by Hopko Meijerink (h.meijering@rug.nl).

New ssh(1) connections may be difficult to establish if the used ssh-key is passphrase-protected (but it is not impossible to do so, see e.g., ssh-cron(1)), and using an ssh-key without a passphrase is discouraged as client computers are immediagely compromised too, once the controller is compromised. Furthermore, using scp(1) results in several additional entries showing sshd(1) connections in the client's logfiles, which in turn may disclose information that the client is intensively monitored.

To copy files between the client and the controller, the GET and PUT commands (described below) should be used instead, as these commands use the existing ssh(1) connection. In general, LOCAL commands should not be used to establish additional ssh(1) connections to a client.

REMOTE COMMANDS

Remote commands are commands executed on the client using the SSH shell. These commands are executed using the standard PATH set for the SSH shell. However, it is advised to specify the full pathname to the programs to be executed, to prevent ``trojan approaches'' where a trojan horse is installed in an `earlier' directory of the PATH-specification than the intended program.

Two special remote commands are GET and PUT, which can be used to copy files between the client and the controller. Internally, GET and PUT use the DD specification. If a non-default specification is used, one should ensure that the alternate program accepts dd(1)'s if=, of=, bs= and count= options. With GET the options bs=, count= and of= are used, with PUT the options bs=, count= and if= are used. Normally there should be no need to alter the default DD specification.

The GET command may be used as follows:

The PUT command may be used as follows:

Plain commands can be executed on the client computer by merely specifying them. Of course, this implies that programs on the client which are named, e.g., LABEL, LOCAL or USE, cannot be executed, since these names are interpreted otherwise by stealth. It's unlikely that this restriction presents much of a problem....

The following commands are available for execution on the client:

The maximum download size (using GET or CHECK) can be specified using the --max-size option, see below. By default this size is set at 10M.

OPTIONS

Short options are provided between parentheses, immediately following their long option equivalents. Option descriptions starting with (C) can only be used on the command-line, and are ignored when specified in the second section of the policy file.

Only one of the options --daemon, --reload, --rerun, --resume, --suspend, and --terminate can be specified. The options --reload, --rerun, --resume, --suspend, and --terminate ignore any other options.

The following options are still recognized for backward compatibility with stealth pre-3.00 versions and will be removed in future versions. They generate error messages suggesting alternatives:

The following options were discontinued starting with stealth version 3.00.00:

When specifying long options in policy files the initial hyphens should be omitted. Here are some examples:

    %%
    log /tmp/stealth.log
    verbosity 3

RSYSLOG FILTERING

When using rsyslogd(1) property based filters may be used to filter syslog messages and write them to a file of your choice. E.g., to filter messages starting with the syslog message tag (e.g., STEALTH) use


:syslogtag, isequal, "STEALTH:"   /var/log/stealth.log
:syslogtag, isequal, "STEALTH:"   ~
        
Note that the colon is part of the tag, but is not specified with the syslog-tag option.

This causes all messages having the STEALTH: tag to be written on /var/log/stealth.log after which they are discarded. More extensive filtering is also supported, see, e.g., http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/rsyslog_conf_filter.html and http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/property_replacer.html

Time stamps written by rsyslogd are not controlled by stealth's --time-stamp option, but, e.g., by a TZ specification in /etc/default/rsyslog. Simply add the line

    export TZ=UTC
to /etc/default/rsyslog, followed by restarting rsyslogd configures rsyslogd to generate time stamps using UTC.

DEPLOYMENT SUMMARY

The following summarizes the advised steps to perform when installing stealth. All these steps are elaborated upon in stealth's User Guide (chapter Running `stealth'):

FILES

/usr/share/doc/stealth/;
the policy file;
files under the BASE directory as defined in the policy file;
the report file as defined by the policy's USE REPORT directive.

SEE ALSO

cron(1), dd(1), diff(1), dpkg(1), find(1), logrotate(1), ls(1), mail(1), sha1sum(1), passwd(5), rsyslog(1), sendmail(1), sh(1), ssh(1), ssh-cron(1)

DIAGNOSTICS

By default, executed commands are echoed to stderr. Use -q to suppress this echoing.

BUGS

None reported

COPYRIGHT

This is free software, distributed under the terms of the `GNU General Public License'. Copyright remains with the author. Stealth is found at http://stealth.sourceforge.net/.

ORGANIZATION

Center for Information Technology, University of Groningen.

AUTHOR

Frank B. Brokken (f.b.brokken@rug.nl).