Secure audit logs to support computer forensics

  • Authors:
  • Bruce Schneier;John Kelsey

  • Affiliations:
  • Counterpane Systems, Minneapolis, MN;Counterpane Systems, Minneapolis, MN

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC)
  • Year:
  • 1999

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.02

Visualization

Abstract

In many real-world applications, sensitive information must be kept it log files on an untrusted machine. In the event that an attacker captures this machine, we would like to guarantee that he will gain little or no information from the log files and to limit his ability to corrupt the log files. We describe a computationally cheap method for making all log entries generated prior to the logging machine's compromise impossible for the attacker to read, and also impossible to modify or destroy undetectably.