Subject: Re: [PATCH] XFRM: SPD auditing fix to include the netmask/prefix-length

From: Paul Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:45:46 -0500

On Thursday 29 November 2007 5:34:59 am Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 07:55:12PM +0000, Paul Moore wrote:
> > Currently the netmask/prefix-length of an IPsec SPD entry is not included
> > in any of the SPD related audit messages.  This can cause a problem when
> > the audit log is examined as the netmask/prefix-length is vital in
> > determining what network traffic is affected by a particular SPD entry. 
> > This patch fixes this problem by adding two additional fields,
> > "src_prefixlen" and "dst_prefixlen", to the SPD audit messages to
> > indicate the source and destination netmasks.  These new fields are only
> > included in the audit message when the netmask/prefix-length is less than
> > the address length, i.e. the SPD entry applies to a network address and
> > not a host address.
>
> Any reason why we don't just always include them?

The audit folks seem to be very sensitive to the size/length of the audit 
messages, they prefer they be as small as possible.  I thought that one way 
to save space would be to only print the prefix length information when the 
address referred to a network and not a single host.

Would you prefer it if the prefix length information was always included in 
the audit message?  Joy?  Audit folks?

-- 
paul moore
linux security @ hp