Demo Discussion
Forum Config Examples Contributions Vulnerabilities
  Discussion forum about ELOG  Not logged in ELOG logo
icon4.gif   Incomplete SSL proxy instructions, insecure result., posted by Konstantin Olchanski on Fri Mar 22 19:41:31 2013 
    icon2.gif   Re: Incomplete SSL proxy instructions, insecure result., posted by Stefan Ritt on Wed Apr 3 17:11:06 2013 
Message ID: 67472     Entry time: Wed Apr 3 17:11:06 2013     In reply to: 67469
Icon: Reply  Author: Stefan Ritt  Author Email: stefan.ritt@psi.ch 
Category: Bug report  OS: Linux  ELOG Version: 2.9.2 
Subject: Re: Incomplete SSL proxy instructions, insecure result. 
> The instructions for securing elogd using an SSL proxy are incomplete.
> http://midas.psi.ch/elog/adminguide.html#secure
> http://midas.psi.ch/elogs/contributions/11
> 
> If you follow these instructions, elogd will still listen for and accept non-SSL connections on it's own TCP port bypassing the SSL proxy.
> 
> (True, the elogd TCP port number is somewhat secret, so there is some security-by-obscurity here).
> 
> To secure the elogd TCP port against connections that bypass the SSL proxy, elogd has to be started
> with the "-n localhost" command line options.
> 
> To add this option, one has to edit /etc/init.d/elogd. I do not know if this change will be lost when the elog rpm package is updated.
> 
> It would be better if this option could have been specified through elogd.conf.
> 
> The "-n" command line option is not documented here
> http://midas.psi.ch/elog/adminguide.html#config
> but is visible if you run "elogd -h".
> 
> P.S. Even with "-n localhost", users of the local machine can bypass the SSL proxy.
> 
> K.O.

I added the option "interface" to the config file. So you could do

[global]
...
interface = localhost


It was not there originally since most people who care about security use a firewall. The firewall (either locally or one another machine), opens only port 443 for the secure connection and 
not the non-secure one (typically 80 or 8080). This way this has not been an issue in the past. As you guessed correctly the -n option would be overwritten by an rpm package update, so 
that's why I added the "interface" option.
ELOG V3.1.5-fe60aaf