Trusted Logging Requirements for Grid Computing

Jun Ho Huh ( Oxford University Computing Laboratory )

The rise of many kinds of grid systems, and associated security threats, makes very necessary the provision of trustworthy services for audit and logging. However, existing distributed logging solutions tend to put little emphasis on the security of logging. We present a number of use cases where the logs have security properties in their own rights, and so the logs themselves are highly privileged: hence, these logs need to be integrity and confidentiality protected while being accessed, reconciled and analysed with distributed audit and logging services spanning across multiple administrative domains. Mindful of the new set of security premises presented with virtualisation and trusted computing technologies, we derive a common set of trusted logging requirements which suggests the possible use of remote attestation to enforce consistent security procedures and policies in distributed logging services; and aims to facilitate production and analysis of log data with strong guarantees of confidentiality and integrity, to an evidential standard in a variety of contexts.