Title

The MySQL Server must produce audit records containing sufficient information to establish what type of events occurred. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Information system auditing capability is critical for accurate forensic analysis. Without establishing what type of event occurred, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit record content that may be necessary to satisfy the requirement of this policy includes, for example, time stamps, user/process identifiers, event descriptions, success/fail indications, filenames involved, and access control or flow control rules invoked. Associating event types with detected events in the application and audit logs provides a means of investigating an attack; recognizing resource utilization or capacity thresholds; or identifying an improperly configured application. Database software is capable of a range of actions on data stored within the database. It is important, for accurate forensic analysis, to know exactly what actions were performed. This requires specific information regarding the event type an audit record is referring to. If event type information is not recorded and stored with the audit record, the record itself is of very limited use.

Check Content

If Audit Log Components are installed and running in the MySQL Server, the log files will have audit records with information regarding what type of event occured. Verify the audit_log plugin is installed and active: mysql> SHOW PLUGINS; If the audit_log plugin is not found or is disabled, this is a finding. Verify the audit log components are set in the system variables: mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'audit_log%'; If the audit_log variables are not configured, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Install and activate the audit log component for MySQL and configure the variables required for logging.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID:

Vulnerability ID: V-32368

Group Title:

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.