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• Launchpad entry: https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/integrity-check

• Packages affected: system-integrity-check

Summary

This spec is a more detailed one that has been splitted from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerCandy and there is no real summary for it.

Rationale

A lot of sysadmins have the need to do lightweight intrusion detection to ensure system integrity. system-integrity-check provides a way to at least verify a big set of data on an installed system to ensure that main set of tools have not been compromised. The checker is *NOT* a replacement for a full intrusion detection system.

Use cases

• Elmo wants to verify that all the binaries on a certain system are still ok. He knows that system-integrity-check can do that offline using a trusted source of data (pkgsum.ubuntu.com). Once verified that the main set of binaries are still intact, he will be able to reinstall whatever is corrupted or compromised with very little effort due to the detailed report that's generated by the scan. He is also aware that not everything can be checked, but at least the system is safe enough to be accessible.

Implementation

• Infrastructure at the datacenter (pkgsum.ubuntu.com) is now available and updated automatically.
• move to use https (high priority):
  • change pkgsum.ubuntu.com (done - 28/11/2006)
  • adapt the client to use https (busybox wget does not support https. Packaged wget-udeb with cjwatson consensum).
• system-integrity-check code is in the archive and hooked up to rescue d-i boot option (done).
• move system-integrity-check to main and make it part of cd images.
• add more checks to system-integrity-check:
  • check for orphaned files.
  • add SHA1 checks (does it add anything compared to md5)?
  • attempt to not rely on dpkg database on the installed system.
• offer the code as deb to run on the running system (low priority due to the hooks with d-i).
• in the long term, get soyuz to populate pkgsum (separate spec in progress with malcc that's not available yet).
• add option to "add external pkgsum archive" for internal company use that do not want to use pkgsum or add pkgs to the archive.
• add concept of Origin: on server (need to provide) and client (need to understand) to support mixed archives from pkgsum and custom repositories.

Unresolved issues

• Abstracting the tool from the dpkg db on the installed system is not trivial and might end up in tons of false positive. is it actually worth doing it? also in front of the fact that the system will need a reinstall if such db is compromised.
• find a more fancy name (cockfosters?)

CategorySpec