Jared,
I realize the following is not really an answer, but it may provide
a little food for thought.
Practical:
1. Log miner or other log reading tool could be used to track
changes made through the transaction layer. Some operations can be done with
nologging, but not all and the undo is logged regardless. Yes, it would be
complicated and messy.
2. If you don't trust the SAs and DBAs for the systems, they need to
be replaced. You are absolutely correct that if a person has the knowledge
and motive, almost anything is possible. This is shown time and time again
by corporate embezzlement.
3. As a DBA, I never want to know root's password. If I need SA type
commands, either use sudo on unix (not sure if there is an equivalent on
NT/2K) or provide exact information to the SA. I work on maintaining a good
relationship with the SAs so we each respect each other's 'turf' and don't
try to do things we are not qualified to do.
4. Changing passwords frequently, especially system generated ones,
leads to people writing them down or otherwise storing them somewhere they
can be accessed. I wonder how many of us have 1 password (with minor
variations) for the overwhelming majority of our systems/logins.
5. Don't make security so onerous and inconvenient that people are
constantly looking for ways around it just so that they can do their job.
This encourages the creation of security holes and a general disregard for
the processes and procedures.
6. If you create a server no admins have access to, how would it be
set up and maintained?
Theoretical
The only truly secure system is the one that is never turned on.
Once power is applied and the system is started, it can be compromised. An
SA can su - oracle and login as sysdba, a DBA can spoof a user, a developer
could insert malicious code.
I think that the issue is to create and abide by standards and
processes, hire trustworthy personnel and treat them right.
As has been shown recently here in the US, there are significant
business risks from unethical, greedy people. How are these prevented?
Dan Fink
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 4:05 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Dear list,
Let me toss a hypothetical situation at you.
Say some auditors looked at some of your primary systems,
and concluded that they had no assurance that someone with
admin access to the server had not changed financial information
to benefit themselves, or to falsify financial records for the
gain of the company.
Not that they might have any proof that something like that
had been done, but rather, just not proof that it had *not*
been done.
I've been pondering this for a bit, and it seems to me that if
someone had good knowledge of both the OS and the
database (Oracle), as well as having admin rights on the
server, there are few things you can do to prevent such a person
from changing data in the database, and completely
covering his or her tracks.
The platforms in question are Unix, Windows NT and
Windows 2000. I've limited it to those as most database
systems use one of those, and besides, that's all I know. :)
Consider what steps you might take to audit unauthorized
transactions performed by an admin.
Oracle Auditing could be used, but someone with admin
access to the server and database could easily alter the
records created by system auditing.
You could create an audit table, using a trigger to audit
sensitive tables. A materialized view on a remote database
could be created on sensitive tables to remotely log all
actions.
In the case of the audit table, that could easily be disabled,
and then re-enabled after the nefarious DML had completed.
The materialized views might be more difficult to circumvent.
If the remote end is using a dblink to the server employing a
password that is *different* than that of it's own account at the
remote server, it should be impossible for someone to completely
cover the traces of transactions created to falsify data.
The MV Logs could be dropped, but without access to the MV's
at the remote server, the MV's would have to be left in place.
These could be used as a reference to look for unauthorized transactions
in the primary server. If this same admin has access to the remote
server where the MV's are, then this can also be circumvented.
There is also the logs created as when logging in as internal
or sysdba. ( $ORACLE_HOME/rdms/audit/*.aud )
These can simply be deleted. Some system could be used to save
these to a remote server, but it would have to run *very* frequently to
be effective.
Oracle password files could also be used. While this can prevent
someone from logging in as SYS or SYSTEM while in place, all it
takes is a change to init.ora, and a database bounce to fix that.
Make your bogus data changes, change the init.ora back and
bounce the database again.
A somewhat clever person could set this up to automatically
take place the next time the DB is bounced.
The conclusion I have come to is that the only effective method
that could be used to create an audit trail for such a scenario is
to create Materialized Views on sensitive tables, and create them
on a server that admins are guaranteed to not have access to.
Of course, I may be missing something. I'm not always one to
catch all the details right off. Input, comments, suggestions, far
out ideas are all welcome.
If you've read this far, thanks!
Jared
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