Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-sacm-nea-swima-patnc
draft-ietf-sacm-nea-swima-patnc
SACM C. Schmidt
Internet-Draft D. Haynes
Intended status: Standards Track C. Coffin
Expires: October 8, 2018 The MITRE Corporation
D. Waltermire
National Institute of Standards and Technology
J. Fitzgerald-McKay
United States National Security Agency
April 6, 2018
Software Inventory Message and Attributes (SWIMA) for PA-TNC
draft-ietf-sacm-nea-swima-patnc-05
Abstract
This document extends "PA-TNC: A Posture Attribute (PA) Protocol
Compatible with Trusted Network Connect (TNC)" (RFC 5792) by
providing specific attributes and message exchanges to allow
endpoints to report their installed software inventory information to
a NEA server, as defined in "Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA):
Overview and Requirements" (RFC 5209).
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on October 8, 2018.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA) . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1. Supported Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.1. Use Software Inventory as an Access Control Factor . 8
2.1.2. Central Stores of Up-to-Date Endpoint Software
Inventory Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.3. PA-TNC Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2. Non-supported Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3. SWIMA Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4. Non-SWIMA Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.5. Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.6. Non-Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3. System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.1. Data Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2. Data Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.3. Basic Attribute Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4. Core Software Reporting Information . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.4.1. Software Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.4.2. Data Model Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.4.3. Record Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.4.4. Software Locators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.4.5. Source Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.4.6. Using Software and Record Identifiers in SWIMA
Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.5. Targeted Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.6. Monitoring Changes in an Endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.7. Reporting Change Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.7.1. Event Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.7.2. Core Event Tracking Information . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.7.3. Updating Inventory Knowledge Based on Events . . . . 27
3.7.4. Using Event Records in SWIMA Attributes . . . . . . . 28
3.7.5. Partial and Complete Lists of Event Records in SWIMA
Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.7.6. Synchronizing Event Identifiers and Epochs . . . . . 30
3.8. Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
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3.8.1. Establishing Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.8.2. Managing Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.8.3. Terminating Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.8.4. Subscription Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.8.5. Fulfilling Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.8.5.1. Subscriptions Reporting Inventories . . . . . . . 36
3.8.5.2. Subscriptions Reporting Events . . . . . . . . . 36
3.8.5.3. Targeted Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.8.5.4. No Subscription Consolidation . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.8.5.5. Delayed Subscription Fulfillment . . . . . . . . 38
3.9. Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4. Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.1. Direct Response to a SWIMA Request . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.2. Subscription-Based Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.3. Required Exchanges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5. Software Inventory Messages and Attributes . . . . . . . . . 42
5.1. PA Subtype (AKA PA-TNC Component Type) . . . . . . . . . 42
5.2. SWIMA Attribute Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.3. Message Diagram Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.4. SWIMA Attribute Enumeration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.5. Normalization of Text Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.6. Request IDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.7. SWIMA Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5.8. Software Identifier Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5.9. Software Identifier Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.10. Software Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.11. Software Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.12. Subscription Status Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.13. Subscription Status Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.14. Source Metadata Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.15. Source Metadata Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.16. PA-TNC Error as Used by SWIMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.16.1. SWIMA_ERROR,
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR and
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_ID_REUSE_ERROR Information . . . 76
5.16.2. SWIMA_RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE_ERROR Information . . . . . 77
5.16.3. SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR Information . . 79
6. Supported Data Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6.1. ISO 2015 SWID Tags using XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6.1.1. Guidance on Normalizing Source Data to ISO 2015 SWID
Tags using XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6.1.2. Guidance on Creation of Software Identifiers from ISO
2015 SWID Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.2. ISO 2009 SWID Tags using XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.2.1. Guidance on Normalizing Source Data to ISO 2009 SWID
Tags using XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.2.2. Guidance on Creation of Software Identifiers from ISO
2009 SWID Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
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7. Relationship to Other Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
8.1. Evidentiary Value of Software Inventory Evidence Records 84
8.2. Sensitivity of Collected Records . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
8.3. Integrity of Endpoint Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
8.4. SWIMA-PC Access Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
8.5. Sanitization of Record Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
8.6. PA-TNC Security Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
9. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
10.1. PA Subtypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
10.2. Registry for PA-TNC Attribute Types . . . . . . . . . . 88
10.3. Registry for PA-TNC Error Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
10.4. Registry for Software Data Models . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
1. Introduction
Knowing the list of the software installed on endpoints is useful to
understand and maintain the security state of a network. For
example, if an enterprise policy requires the presence of certain
software and prohibits the presence of other software, reported
software installation information can be used to indicate compliance
and non-compliance with these requirements. Endpoint software
installation inventory lists (hereinafter "software inventories") can
further be used to determine an endpoint's exposure to attack based
on comparison to vulnerability or threat alerts against identified
software's patch level data. These are some of the highly useful
management use cases supported by software inventory data.
Software Inventory Message and Attributes (SWIMA) for PA-TNC provides
a standardized method for exchanging software inventory data that
includes a unique software identifier associated with a specific
version of a software product. SWIMA can also convey metadata about
software products beyond this identifier. SWIMA enables software
identification, installation, and characterization information to be
be transported to a central server from any endpoint that supports
this specification. Such information can come from multiple sources,
including tag files (such as ISO SWID tags [SWID15]), reports from
third party inventory tools, output from package managers, and other
sources. SWIMA does not standardize how software is detected,
instead relying on a set of "data sources" to provide information
about installed software. Instead, SWIMA provides a flexible
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transport capable of conveying this information regardless of how it
is expressed.
This specification is designed to only report software that is
installed on a target endpoint. In particular, it does not monitor
or report information about what software is running on the endpoint.
Likewise, it is not intended to report individual files, libraries,
installation packages, or similar artifacts. While all of this
information has its uses, this information requires different
metadata and monitoring methods. As a result, this specification
focuses solely on software inventory information, leaving reporting
of other classes of endpoint information to other specifications.
Note that while this specification focuses on "software inventory",
the mechanisms it describes could also be used to convey information
about firmware and operating systems associated with an endpoint.
The focus on software throughout this document should not be read as
excluding the use of SWIMA for these other purposes.
This specification defines a new set of PA-TNC attributes, which are
used to communicate requests for software inventory information and
software installation change events. The exchange of these messages
allows software inventory information to be sent to a NEA Server,
which can make this information available to other applications.
Part of the motivation for the development of SWIMA was to support
the IETF's Security Automation and Continuous Monitoring (SACM)
architecture. More details about SWIMA's role in SACM appear in
Section 7. However, SWIMA has no dependencies on any part of SACM
and is usable wherever the NEA architecture is employed.
1.1. Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA)
SWIMA defines extensions to the PA-TNC specification, which is part
of the Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA) architecture. The NEA
specifications define an open solution architecture that enables
network operators to collect and utilize information about endpoint
configuration and state. This information can be used to enforce
policies, monitor endpoint health, and for many other activities.
Information about the software present on an endpoint is an important
consideration for such activities. The new PA-TNC attributes defined
in this document are used to communicate software inventory evidence,
collected from a range of possible sources, from the posture
collector on the endpoint to the posture validator on a NEA Server
using the PA-TNC interface, as shown in Figure 1 below.
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+-------------+ +--------------+
| Posture | <--------PA--------> | Posture |
| Collectors | | Validators |
| (1 .. N) | | (1 .. N) |
+-------------+ +--------------+
| |
| |
| |
+-------------+ +--------------+
| Posture | | Posture |
| Broker | <--------PB--------> | Broker |
| Client | | Server |
+-------------+ +--------------+
| |
| |
+-------------+ +--------------+
| Posture | | Posture |
| Transport | <--------PT--------> | Transport |
| Client | | Server |
| (1 .. N) | | (1 .. N) |
+-------------+ +--------------+
NEA CLIENT NEA SERVER
Figure 1: NEA Reference Model
To better understand this specification, the reader should review the
NEA reference architecture as described in the Network Endpoint
Assessment (NEA): Overview and Requirements [RFC5209]. The reader
should also review the PA-TNC interfaces as defined in RFC 5792
[RFC5792].
This document is based on standards published by the Trusted
Computing Group's Trusted Network Communications (TNC) workgroup.
The TNC and NEA architectures are interoperable and many components
are equivalent.
1.2. Conventions Used in This Document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
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1.3. Definitions
This section defines terms with special meaning within this document.
SWIMA-PC - A NEA Posture Collector (PC) that interprets SWIMA
Attributes sent by SWIMA-PVs and which conforms to this
specification. Note that such a posture collector might also support
other PA-TNC exchanges beyond those defined herein.
SWIMA-PV - A NEA Posture Validator (PV) that interprets SWIMA
Attributes sent by SWIMA-PCs and which conforms to this
specification. Note that such a posture verifier might also support
other PA-TNC exchanges beyond those defined herein.
SWIMA Attribute - This is a PA-TNC attribute (as defined in RFC 5792
[RFC5792] extension as defined in this specification.
Endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection - The set of
information regarding the set of software installed on an endpoint.
An endpoint's software inventory evidence collection might include
information created by or derived from multiple sources, including
but not limited to SWID tag files deposited on the file system during
software installation, information generated by software discovery
tools, and information dynamically generated by a software or package
management system on an endpoint.
Software Inventory Evidence Record - The endpoint's Software
Inventory Evidence Collection is composed of "records". Each record
corresponds to one installed instance of a particular software
product as reported by some data source. It is possible for a single
installed instance to have multiple software inventory evidence
records in an endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection -
this can happen if multiple sources all report the same software
installation instance.
Software Identifier - A string associated with a specific version of
a specific software product. These identifiers are derived from the
records used to describe software products. SWIMA does not limit the
formats of these records, nor does it enforce that the same format be
populated the same way by all data sources. As such, while each
software identifier uniquely identifies a specific software product,
the same software product might be associated with multiple software
identifiers reflecting differences between different data sources and
supported record formats.
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2. Background
2.1. Supported Use Cases
This section describes the use cases supported by this specification.
The primary use of exchanging software inventory information over the
PA-TNC interface is to enable a challenger (e.g., NEA Server) to
obtain inventory evidence about some system in a way that conforms to
NEA procedures and expressed using a standard format. Collected
software information can support a range of security activities
including determining whether an endpoint is permitted to connect to
the enterprise, determining which endpoints contain software that
requires patching, and similar activities.
2.1.1. Use Software Inventory as an Access Control Factor
Some enterprises might define security policies that require
connected endpoints to have certain pieces of security software
installed. By contrast, some security policies might prevent access
to resources by endpoints that have certain prohibited pieces of
software installed, since such applications might pose a security
risk. To support such policies, the NEA Server needs to collect
software inventory evidence from a target endpoint that is seeking to
initiate or continue connectivity to the enterprise resource.
Based on this specification, the SWIMA-PC can provide a complete or
partial inventory to the SWIMA-PV as required to determine policy
compliance. The SWIMA-PV can then use this as evidence of compliance
or non-compliance to make a policy-based access decision.
2.1.2. Central Stores of Up-to-Date Endpoint Software Inventory Data
Many tools use information about an endpoint's software inventory to
monitor and enforce the security of a network. For example, a
software patching tool needs to determine if there is out-of-date
software installed that needs to be updated. A vulnerability
management tool needs to identify endpoints with known vulnerable
software installed (patched or otherwise) to gauge an endpoint's
relative exposure to attack. A license management tool needs to
verify that all installed software within the enterprise is accounted
for. A central repository representing an up-to-date understanding
of each endpoint's software inventory facilitates these activities.
Multiple tools can share such a repository ensuring that software
inventory information is collected more frequently and efficiently,
leading to a more complete and consistent understanding of installed
software state as compared to each tool collecting the same inventory
information from endpoints individually.
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This specification supports these activities through a number of
mechanisms. As noted above, a SWIMA-PC can provide a complete list
of software present in an endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection to the SWIMA-PV, which can then pass this information on
to a central repository, such as a Configuration Management Database
(CMDB) or similar application. In addition, SWIMA-PCs are required
to be able to monitor for changes to an endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection in near real-time and immediately push reports of
detected changes to the SWIMA-PV. Thus, any central repository fed
by a SWIMA-PV receiving inventory information can be updated quickly
after a change occurs. Keeping a central repository synchronized
with current software inventory information in this way allows tools
to make efficient decisions based on up-to-date, consistent
information.
2.1.3. PA-TNC Use Cases
SWIMA is intended to operate over the PA-TNC interface and, as such,
are intended to meet the use cases set out in the PA-TNC
specification.
2.2. Non-supported Use Cases
Some use cases not covered by this specification include:
o Addressing how the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection is populated. In particular, NEA components are not
expected to perform software discovery activities beyond compiling
information in an endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection. This collection might come from multiple sources on
the endpoint (e.g., information generated dynamically by package
management tools or discovery tools, as well as SWID tag files
discovered on the file system). While an enterprise might make
use of software discovery capabilities to identify installed
software, such capabilities are outside the scope of this
specification.
o Converting inventory information expressed in a proprietary format
into formats used in the attributes described in this
specification. Instead, this specification focuses exclusively on
defining interfaces for the transportation of software information
expecting that reporting tools will converge around some set of
standardized formats for this information.
o Mechanisms for a posture validator to request a specific list of
software information based on arbitrary software properties. For
example, requesting only information about software from a
particular vendor is not supported. After the endpoint's Software
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Inventory Evidence Collection has been copied to some central
location, such as the CMDB, processes there can perform queries
based on any criteria present in the collected information, but
this specification does not address using such queries to
constrain the initial collection of this information from the
endpoint.
o Use of properties of certain sources of software information that
might facilitate local tests (i.e., on the endpoint) of endpoint
state. For example, the optional package_footprint field of an
ISO SWID tag can contain a list of files and hash values
associated with the software indicated by the tag. Tools on the
endpoint can use the values in this field to test for the presence
of the indicated files. Successful evaluation of such tests leads
to greater assurance that the indicated software is present on the
endpoint. Currently, most SWID tag creators do not provide values
for tag fields that support local testing. For this reason, the
added complexity of supporting endpoint testing using these fields
is out of scope for this specification, but may be considered in a
future version.
2.3. SWIMA Requirements
Below are the requirements that the SWIMA specification is required
to meet in order to successfully play its role in the NEA
architecture.
Efficient: The NEA architecture enables delay of network access
until the endpoint is determined not to pose a security threat to
the network based on its asserted integrity information. To
minimize user frustration, SWIMA ought to minimize overhead delays
and make PA-TNC communications as rapid and efficient as possible.
Scalable: SWIMA needs to be usable in enterprises that contain tens
of thousands of endpoints or more. As such, it needs to allow a
security tools to make decisions based on up-to-date information
about an endpoint's software inventory without creating an
excessive burden on the enterprise's network.
Support precise and complete historical reporting: This
specification outlines capabilities that support real-time
understanding of the state of endpoint in a network in a way that
can be used by other tools. One means of facilitating such an
outcome is for a CMDB to be able to contain information about all
endpoints connected to the enterprise for all points in time
between the endpoint's first connection and the present. In such
a scenario, it is necessary that any PC be able to report any
changes to its software inventory evidence collection in near
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real-time while connected and, upon reconnection to the
enterprise, be able to update the NEA Server (and through it the
CMDB) with regard to the state of its software inventory evidence
collection throughout the entire interval when it was not
connected.
2.4. Non-SWIMA Requirements
There are certain capabilities that users of the SWIMA specification
might require but which are beyond the scope of SWIMA itself and need
to be addressed by other standards. This list is not exhaustive.
Confidentiality: The SWIMA specification does not define a mechanism
for confidentiality, nor is confidentiality automatically provided
by using the PA-TNC interface. In the NEA architecture,
confidentiality is generally provided by the underlying transport
protocols, such as the PT Binding to TLS [RFC6876] or PT-EAP
Posture Transport for Tunneled EAP Methods [RFC7171] - see
Section 7 for more information on related standards. The
information conveyed by SWIMA is often sensitive in nature for
both security (Section 8) and privacy (Section 9) reasons. Those
who implement SWIMA need to ensure that appropriate NEA transport
mechanisms are employed to meet confidentiality requirements.
2.5. Assumptions
The Posture Broker Client and Posture Broker Server are assumed to
provide reliable delivery for PA-TNC messages and attributes sent
between the SWIMA-PCs and the SWIMA-PVs. Reliable delivery means
that either a message is delivered or the sender is made aware of the
delivery failure. In the event that reliable delivery cannot be
provided, the Posture Collector or Posture Validator is expected to
terminate the connection.
2.6. Non-Assumptions
This specification explicitly does not assume that software inventory
information exchanges reflect the software installation state of the
endpoint. This specification does not attempt to detect when the
endpoint is providing false information, either through malice or
error, but instead focuses on correctly and reliably providing the
reported Software Inventory Evidence Collection to the NEA Server.
Tools that employ the SWIMA standard can include methods to help
verify the accuracy of reports, but how those tools do so is beyond
the scope of this specification.
Similarly, this specification makes no assumption about the
completeness of the Software Inventory Evidence Collection's coverage
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of the total set of software installed on the endpoint. It is
possible, and even likely, that some installed software is not
represented by a record in an endpoints Software Inventory Evidence
Collection. Instead, SWIMA ensures that what does get reported is
reported consistently and that the software products that are
reported can be reliably tracked.
See Section 8 for more on this security consideration.
3. System Requirements
The SWIMA specification facilitates the exchange of software
inventory and event information. Specifically, each application
supporting SWIMA includes a component known as the SWIMA-PC that
receives messages sent with the SWIMA Attributes component type. The
SWIMA-PC is also responsible for sending appropriate SWIMA Attributes
back to the SWIMA-PV in response. This section outlines what
software inventories and events are and the requirements on SWIMA-PCs
and SWIMA-PVs in order to support the stated use cases of this
specification.
3.1. Data Sources
The records in an endpoint's software inventory evidence collection
come from one or more "sources". A source represents one collection
of software inventory information about the endpoint. Examples of
sources include, but are not limited to, ISO SWID tags deposited on
the filesystem and collected therefrom, information derived from
package managers (e.g., RPM or YUM), and the output of software
inventory scanning tools.
There is no expectation that any one source of inventory information
will have either perfect or complete software inventory information.
For this reason, this specification supports the simultaneous use of
multiple sources of software inventory information. Each source
might have its own "sphere of expertise" and report the software
within that sphere. For example, a package manager would have
excellent understanding of the software that it managed, but would
not necessarily have any information about software installed via
other means.
A SWIMA-PC is not required to utilize every possible source of
software information on its endpoint. Some SWIMA-PCs might be
explicitly tied only to one or a handful of software inventory
sources, or it could be designed to dynamically accommodate new
sources. For all software inventory evidence sources that a
particular SWIMA-PC supports, it MUST completely support all
requirements of this specification with regard to those sources. A
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potential source that cannot support some set of required
functionality (e.g., it is unable to monitor the software it reports
for change events, as discussed in Section 3.6) MUST NOT be used as a
source of endpoint software inventory information, even if it could
provide some information. In other words, a source either supports
full functionality as described in this specification, or it cannot
be used at all.
When sending information about installed software the SWIMA-PC MUST
include the complete set of relevant data from all supported sources
of software inventory evidence. In other words, sources need to be
used consistently. This is because, if a particular source is
included in an initial inventory, but excluded from a later
inventory, the SWIMA-PV receiving this information might reasonably
conclude that the software reported by that source was no longer
installed on the endpoint. As such, it is important that all
supported sources be used every time the SWIMA-PC provides
information to a SWIMA-PV.
Note that, if a SWIMA-PC collects data from multiple sources, it is
possible that some software products might be "double counted". This
can happen if both sources of inventory evidence provide a record for
a single installation of a software product. When a SWIMA-PC reports
information or records events from multiple inventory evidence
sources, it MUST use the information those sources provide, rather
than attempting to perform some form of reduction. In other words,
if multiple sources report records corresponding to a single
installation of a software product, all such records from each source
are required to be part of the SWIMA-PC's processing even if this
might lead to multiple reporting, and the SWIMA-PC is not to ignore
some records to avoid such multiple reporting.
All inventory records reported by a SWIMA-PC include a Source
Identifier linking them to a particular source. Source Identifiers
are discussed more in Section 3.4.5.
3.2. Data Models
SWIMA conveys records about software presence from a SWIMA-PC to a
SWIMA-PV. SWIMA does not manage the actual generation or collection
of such records on the endpoint. As a result, information available
to SWIMA-PCs might come in a variety of formats, and a SWIMA-PC could
have little control over the format of the data made available to it.
Because of this, SWIMA places no constraints on the format of these
generated records and supports an open set of record formats by which
installed software instances can be described. The following terms
are used in this document:
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Data model - The format used to structure data within a given record.
SWIMA does not constrain the data models it conveys.
Record - A populated instance of some data model that describes a
software product.
Do not confuse the "data model" described here with the structure of
the SWIMA messages and attributes used to convey information between
SWIMA-PVs and PCs. The SWIMA specification dictates the structure of
its messages and attributes. Some attributes, however, have specific
fields used to convey inventory records, and those fields support an
extensible list of data models for their values. In other words,
SWIMA data models provide an extension point within SWIMA attributes
that allows the structure of inventory records to evolve.
The data model used to structure software inventory information has
very little impact on the behavior of the components defined in this
specification. The SWIMA-PV has no dependency on the data model of
records conveyed in SWIMA messages. For this reason, it MUST NOT
reject a message or respond with a PA-TNC Error due to the data model
used to structure records in attributes it receives. Similarly, it
MUST NOT reject a message or respond with a PA-TNC Error if a record
fails to comply with a stated format, unless that failure prevents
correct parsing of the attribute itself. In short, the record bodies
are effectively treated as "black boxes" by the SWIMA-PV. (Note that
the SWIMA-PV might serve as the front-end of other functionality that
does have a dependency on the data model used to structure software
information, but any such dependency is beyond the scope of this
specification and needs to be addressed outside the behaviors
specified in this document. This specification is only concerned
with collection and delivery of software inventory information;
components that consume and use this information are a separate
concern.)
The SWIMA-PC does have one functional dependency on the data models
used in the software records it delivers, but only insofar as it is
required to deterministically create a Software Identifier (described
in Section 3.4.1) based on each record it delivers. The SWIMA-PC
MUST be able to generate a Software Identifier for each record it
delivers, and if the SWIMA-PC cannot do so the record cannot be
delivered by the SWIMA-PC. All SWIMA-PCs MUST at least be able to
generate Software Identifiers for the data model types specified in
Section 6 of this document. A SWIMA-PC MAY include the ability to
generate Software Identifiers for other data model types, and thus be
able to support them as well.
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3.3. Basic Attribute Exchange
In the most basic exchange supported by this specification, a SWIMA-
PV sends a request to the SWIMA-PC requesting some type of
information about the endpoint's software inventory. This simple
exchange is shown in Figure 2.
+-------------+ +--------------+
| SWIMA-PC | | SWIMA-PV | Time
+-------------+ +--------------+ |
| | |
|<------------SWIMA Request---------------| |
| | |
|-------------SWIMA Response------------->| |
| | V
Figure 2: Basic SWIMA Attribute Exchange
Upon receiving such a SWIMA Request from the SWIMA-PV, the SWIMA-PC
is expected to collect all the relevant software inventory
information from the endpoint's software evidence collection and
place it within its response attribute.
SWIMA-PVs MUST discard without error any SWIMA Response attributes
that they receive for which they do not know the SWIMA Request
parameters that led to this SWIMA Response. This is due to the fact
that the SWIMA Request includes parameters that control the nature of
the response (as will be described in the following sections) and
without knowing those parameters the SWIMA Response cannot be
reliably interpreted. Most often receiving an unsolicited SWIMA
Response attribute happens when a NEA Server has multiple SWIMA-PVs;
one SWIMA-PV sends a SWIMA Request but, unless exclusive delivery is
set by the sender and honored by the recipient, both SWIMA-PVs
receive copies of the resulting SWIMA Response. In this case, the
SWIMA-PV that didn't send the SWIMA Request would lack the context
necessary to correctly interpret the SWIMA Response it received and
would simply discard it. Note, however, that proprietary measures
might allow a SWIMA-PV to discover the SWIMA Request parameters for a
SWIMA Response even if that SWIMA-PV did not send the given SWIMA
Request. As such, there is no blanket requirement for a SWIMA-PV to
discard all SWIMA Responses to SWIMA Request the SWIMA-PV did not
generate itself, only that SWIMA-PVs are required to discard SWIMA
Responses for which they cannot get the necessary context to
interpret.
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In the case that it is possible to do so, the SWIMA-PC SHOULD send
its SWIMA Response attribute to the SWIMA-PV that requested it using
exclusive delivery as described in section 4.5 of RFC 5793 (PB-TNC)
[RFC5793]. Exclusive delivery requests that only the sender of the
SWIMA Request receives the resulting SWIMA Response. Note, however,
that PB-TNC does not require the recipient to honor the exclusive
delivery flag in messages that it receives, so setting the flag
cannot be guaranteed to prevent a SWIMA-PV from receiving unsolicited
SWIMA Responses.
All numeric values sent in SWIMA messages are sent in network (big
endian) byte order.
3.4. Core Software Reporting Information
Different parameters in the SWIMA Request can influence what
information is returned in the SWIMA Response. However, while each
SWIMA Response provides different additional information about this
installed software, they all share a common set of fields that
support reliable software identification on an endpoint. These
fields include: Software Identifiers, the Data Model Type, Record
Identifiers, Software Locators, and Source Identifiers. These fields
are present for each reported piece of software in each type of SWIMA
Response. The following sections examine these information types in
more detail.
3.4.1. Software Identifiers
A Software Identifier uniquely identifies a specific version of a
specific software product. The SWIMA specification does not dictate
the structure of a Software Identifier (beyond stating that it is a
string) or define how it is created. Instead, each data model
described in the Software Data Model IANA table (Section 10.4)
includes its own rules for how a Software Identifier is created based
on a record in the Endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection
expressed in that data model. Other data models will have their own
procedures for the creation of associated Software Identifiers.
Within the SWIMA specification, the Software Identifier is simply an
opaque string and there is never any need to unpack any information
that might be part of that identifier.
A Software Identifier is a fraction of the size of the inventory
record from which it is derived. For some combinations of data
models and sources, the full record might never be necessary as the
identifier can be directly correlated to the contents of the full
record. This is possible with authoritative SWID tags, since these
tags always have the same contents and thus a Software Identifier
derived from these tags can be used as a lookup to a local copy of
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the full tag. For other combinations of source and data model, a
server might not be able to determine the specific software product
and version associated with the identifier without requesting
delivery of the full record. However, even in those cases,
downstream consumers of this information might never need the full
record as long as the Software Identifiers they receive can be
tracked reliably. A SWIMA-PV can use Software Identifiers to track
the presence of specific software products on an endpoint over time
in a bandwidth-efficient manner.
There are two important limitations of Software Identifiers to keep
in mind:
1. The identifiers do not necessarily change when the associated
record changes. In some situations, a record in the endpoint's
Software Inventory Evidence Collection will change due to new
information becoming available or in order to correct prior
errors in that information. Such changes might or might not
result in changes to the Software Identifier, depending on the
nature of the changes and the rules governing how Software
Identifiers are derived from records of the appropriate data
model.
2. It is possible that a single software product is installed on a
single endpoint multiple times. If both of these installation
instances are reported by the same source using the same data
format, then this can result in identical Software Identifiers
for each installation instances. In other words, Software
Identifiers might not uniquely identify installation instances;
they just are intended to uniquely identify software products
(which might have more than one installation instance). Instead,
to reliably distinguish between multiple instances of a single
software product, one needs to make use of Record Identifiers,
described in Section 3.4.3.
3.4.2. Data Model Type
The Data Model Type consists of two fields: the Data Model Type PEN
and the Data Model Type. The combination of these fields is used to
identify the type of data model of the associated software inventory
record. The data model is significant not only because it informs
the recipient of the data model of the associated record, but because
the process for generation of the Software Identifier for the record
depends on the record's data model. Clearly identifying the type of
data model from which the Software Identifier was derived thus
provides useful context for that value.
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The PEN (or Private Enterprise Number) identifies the organization
that assigns meaning to the Data Model Type field value. PENs are
managed by IANA in the Private Enterprise Numbers registry. PENs
allow vendors to designate their own set of data models for software
inventory description. IANA reserves the PEN of 0x000000. Data
Model Types associated with this PEN are defined in the Software Data
Model IANA table, created in Section 10.4 of this specification.
Note that this IANA table reserves all values greater than or equal
to 0xC0 (192) for enterprise use. This means that local enterprises
can use custom data formats and indicate them with the IANA PEN and a
Data Model Type value between 0xC0 and 0XFF, inclusive. Those
enterprises are responsible for configuring their SWIMA-PCs to
correctly report those custom data models.
3.4.3. Record Identifiers
A Record Identifier is a 4-byte unsigned integer generated by the
SWIMA-PC that is uniquely associated with a specific record within
the Endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection. The SWIMA-PC
MUST assign a unique identifier to each record when it is added to
the Endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection. The Record
Identifier SHOULD remain unchanged if that record is modified.
(However, it is recognized that, in some circumstances, record
modification might be hard to distinguish from record deletion
followed by creation of a new record. For this reason, retaining a
constant Record Identifier across record modification is recommended
but not required.) The SWIMA-PC might wish to assign Record
Identifiers sequentially, but any scheme is acceptable provided that
no two records receive the same identifier.
Servers can use Record Identifiers to distinguish between multiple
instances of a single software product installed on an endpoint.
Since each installation instance of a software product is associated
with a separate record, servers can use the record identifier to
distinguish between instances. For example, if an event is reported
(as described in Section 3.7), the record identifier will allow the
server to discern which instance of a software product is involved.
3.4.4. Software Locators
In addition to the need to identify software products, many use cases
of inventory information need to know where software is located on
the endpoint. This information might be needed to direct remediation
actions or similar processes. For this reason, every reported
software product also includes a Software Locator to identify where
the software is installed on the endpoint.
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If the location is not provided directly by the record source the
SWIMA-PC is responsible for attempting to determine the location of
the software product. The "location" of a product SHOULD be the
directory in which the software products' executables are kept. The
source and/or SWIMA-PC MUST be consistent in reporting the location
of a software product (i.e., assuming a software product has not
moved, the SWIMA-PC cannot use one location in one report and a
different location for the same software product in another).
The location is expressed as a URI string. The string MUST conform
to URI syntax requirements. [RFC3986] The URI schema describes the
context of the described location. For example, in most cases the
location of the installed software product will be expressed in terms
of its path in the filesystem. For such locations, the location URI
scheme MUST be "file" and the URI MUST conform to the "file" URI
scheme standard [RFC8089] including percent-encoding of whitespace
and other special characters. It is possible that other schemes
could be used to represent other location contexts. Apart from
specifying the use of the "file" scheme, this specification does not
identify other schemes or define their use. When representing
software products in other location contexts, tools MUST be
consistent in their use of schemes, but the exact schemes are not
normatively defined here. SWIMA implementations are not limited to
the IANA list of URI schemes [1] and can define new schemes to
support other types of application locations.
It is possible, that a SWIMA-PC is unable to determine the location
of a reported software product. In this case, the SWIMA-PC MUST
provide a zero-length Software Locator.
3.4.5. Source Identifiers
All SWIMA-PCs MUST track the source of each piece of software
information they report. Each time a SWIMA-PC gets information to
send to a given SWIMA-PV from a new source (from the perspective of
that SWIMA-PV), the SWIMA-PC MUST assign that source a Source
Identification Number, which is an 8-bit unsigned integer. Each item
reported includes the Source Identification Number that provided that
information. All information that is provided by that source, MUST
be delivered with this same Source Identification Number. This MUST
be done for each source used. If the SWIMA-PC ever is unclear as to
whether a given source is new or not, it MUST assume that this is a
new source and assign it a new Source Identification Number. Source
Identification Numbers do not need to be assigned sequentially.
SWIMA does not support the presence of more than 256 sources as the
chance that a single endpoint will have more than 256 methods of
collecting inventory information is vanishingly small. All possible
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values between 0 and 255 are valid; there are no reserved Source
Identification Numbers
Source Identification Numbers can help with (although will not
completely eliminate) the challenges posed by multiple reporting of a
single software instance: since a single source would only report an
instance or event once, if multiple reports of a similar instance
come from multiple sources, this might be an instance of multiple
reporting (although it still might not be so). On the other hand, if
multiple instances are reported by a single source, this almost
certainly means that there are actually multiple instances that are
being legitimately reported.
The SWIMA-PC is responsible for tracking associations between Source
Identifiers and the given data source. This association MUST remain
consistent with regard to a given SWIMA-PV while there is an active
PB-TNC session with that SWIMA-PV. The SWIMA-PC MAY have a different
Source Identifier association for different SWIMA-PVs. Likewise, the
SWIMA-PC MAY change the Source Identifier association for a given
SWIMA-PV if the PB-TNC session terminates. However, implementers of
SWIMA-PCs will probably find it easier to manage associations by
maintaining the same association for all SWIMA-PVs and across
multiple sessions.
Of special note, events records reported from the SWIMA-PC's event
log (discussed in Section 3.7) also need to be sent with their
associated data source. The Source Identifier reported with events
MUST be the current (i.e., at the time the event is sent) Source
Identifier associated with the data source that produced the event,
regardless of how long ago that event occurred. Event logs are
likely to persist far longer than a single PB-TNC session. SWIMA-PCs
MUST ensure that each event can be linked to the appropriate data
source, even if the Source Identifiers used when the event was
created have since been reassigned. In other words, when sending an
event, it needs to be sent with the Source Identifier currently
linked to the data source that produced it, regardless of whether a
different Source Identifier would have been associated with the event
when the event was first created.
Note that the Source Identification Number is primarily used to
support recognition, rather than identification, of sources. That is
to say, a Software Identification Number can tell a recipient that
two events were reported by the same source, but will not necessarily
help that recipient determine which source was used. Moreover,
different SWIMA-PCs will not necessarily use the same Source
Identification Numbers for the same sources. SWIMA-PCs MUST track
the assignment of Source Identification Numbers to ensure consistent
application thereof. SWIMA-PCs MUST also track which Source
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Identification Numbers have been used with each SWIMA-PV with which
they communicate.
3.4.6. Using Software and Record Identifiers in SWIMA Attributes
A SWIMA Attribute reporting an endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection always contains the Software Identifiers associated with
the identified software products. A SWIMA Attribute might or might
not also contain copies of software inventory evidence records. The
attribute exchange is identical to the diagram shown in Figure 2
regardless of whether software inventory evidence records are
included. The SWIMA Request attribute indicates whether the response
is required to include software inventory evidence records.
Excluding software inventory evidence records can reduce the
attribute size of the response by multiple orders of magnitude when
compared to sending the same inventory with full records.
3.5. Targeted Requests
Sometimes a SWIMA-PV does not require information about every piece
of software on an endpoint but only needs to receive updates about
certain software instances. For example, enterprise endpoints might
be required to have certain software products installed and to keep
these updated. Instead of requesting a complete inventory just to
see if these products are present, the SWIMA-PV can make a "targeted
request" for the software in question.
Targeted requests follow the same attribute exchange described in
Figure 2. The SWIMA-PV targets its request by providing one or more
Software Identifiers in its SWIMA Request attribute. The SWIMA-PC
MUST then limit its response to contain only records that match the
indicated Software Identifier(s). This allows the network exchange
to exclude information that is not relevant to a given policy
question, thus reducing unnecessary bandwidth consumption. The
SWIMA-PC's response might or might not include software inventory
evidence records, depending on the parameters of the SWIMA Request.
Note that targeted requests identify the software relevant to the
request only through Software Identifiers. This specification does
not support arbitrary, parameterized querying of records. For
example, one cannot request all records from a certain software
publisher, or all records created by a particular record source.
Targeted requests only allow a requestor to request specific software
(as identified by their Software Identifiers) and receive a response
that is limited to the named software.
There is no assumption that a SWIMA-PC will recognize "synonymous
records" - that is, records from different sources for the same
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software. Recall that different sources and data models may use
different Software Identifier strings for the same software product.
The SWIMA-PC returns only records that match the Software Identifiers
in the SWIMA Request, even if there might be other records in the
endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection for the same
software product. This is necessary because SWIMA-PCs might not have
the ability to determine that two Software Identifiers refer to the
same product.
Targeted requests do not include Record Identifiers or Software
Locators. The response to a targeted request MUST include all
records associated with the named Software Identifiers, including the
case where there are multiple records associated with a single
Software Identifier.
SWIMA-PCs MUST accept targeted requests and process them correctly as
described above. SWIMA-PVs MUST be capable of making targeted
requests and processing the responses thereto.
3.6. Monitoring Changes in an Endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection
The software collection on an endpoint is not static. As software is
installed, uninstalled, patched, or updated, the Software Inventory
Evidence Collection is expected to change to reflect the new software
state on the endpoint. Different record sources might update the
evidence collection at different rates. For example, a package
manager might update its records in the Software Inventory Evidence
Collection immediately whenever it is used to add or remove a
software product. By contrast, sources that perform periodic
examination of the endpoint would likely only update their records in
the Software Inventory Evidence Collection after each examination.
All SWIMA-PCs MUST be able to be able to detect changes to the
Software Inventory Evidence Collection. Specifically, SWIMA-PCs MUST
be able to detect:
o The creation of records
o The deletion of records
o The alteration of records
An "alteration" is anything that modifies the contents of a record
(or would modify it, if the record is dynamically generated on
demand) in any way, regardless of whether the change is functionally
meaningful.
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SWIMA-PCs MUST detect such changes to the endpoint's Software
Inventory Evidence Collection in close to real-time (i.e., within
seconds) when the Posture Collector is operating. In addition, in
the case where there is a period during which the SWIMA-PC is not
operating, the SWIMA-PC MUST be able to determine the net change to
the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection over the period
it was not operational. Specifically, the "net change" represents
the difference between the state of the endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection when the SWIMA-PC was last operational and
monitoring its state, and the state of the endpoint's software
inventory evidence collection when the SWIMA-PC resumed operation.
Note that a net change might not reflect the total number of change
events over this interval. For example, if a record was altered
three times during a period when the SWIMA-PC was unable to monitor
for changes, the net change of this interval might only note that
there was an alteration to the record, but not how many individual
alteration events occurred. It is sufficient for a SWIMA-PC's
determination of a net change to note that there was a difference
between the earlier and current state rather than enumerating all the
individual events that allowed the current state to be reached.
The SWIMA-PC MUST assign a time to each detected change in the
endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection. These timestamps
correspond to the SWIMA-PC's best understanding as to when the
detected change occurred. For changes to the endpoint's Software
Inventory Evidence Collection that occur while the SWIMA-PC is
operating, the SWIMA-PC ought to be able to assign a time to the
event that is accurate to within a few seconds. For changes to the
endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection that occur while
the SWIMA-PC is not operational, upon becoming operational the SWIMA-
PC needs to make a best guess as to the time of the relevant events
(possibly by looking at timestamps on files), but these values might
be off. In the case of dynamically generated records, the time of
change is the time at which the data from which the records are
generate changes, not the time at which a changed record is
generated. For example, if records are dynamically generated based
on data in an RPM database, the time of change would be when the RPM
database changed.
With regard to deletions of records, the SWIMA-PC needs to detect the
deletion and MUST retain a copy of the full deleted record along with
the associated Record Identifier and Software Locator so that the
record and associated information can be provided to the SWIMA-PV
upon request. This copy of the record MUST be retained for a
reasonable amount of time. Vendors and administrators determine what
"reasonable" means, but a copy of the record SHOULD be retained for
as long as the event recording the deletion of the record remains in
the SWIMA-PC's event log (as described in Section 3.7). This is
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recommended because, as long as the event is in the SWIMA-PC's change
logs, the SWIMA-PC might send an event attribute (described in
Section 3.7) that references this record, and a copy of the record is
needed if the SWIMA-PV wants a full copy of the relevant records. In
the case that a SWIMA-PC is called upon to report a deletion event
that is still in the event log but where the record itself is no
longer available, the SWIMA-PC will still return an entry
corresponding to the deletion event, but the field of that entry that
would normally contain the full copy of the record SHOULD be
0-length.
With regard to alterations to a record, SWIMA-PCs MUST detect any
alterations to the contents of a record. Alterations need to be
detected even if they have no functional impact on the record. A
good guideline is that any alteration to a record that might change
the value of a hash taken on the record's contents needs to be
detected by the SWIMA-PC. A SWIMA-PC might be unable to distinguish
modifications to the content of a record from modifications to the
metadata the file system associates with the record. For example, a
SWIMA-PC might use the "last modification" timestamp as an indication
of alteration to a given record, but a record's last modification
time can change for reasons other than modifications to the record
contents. A SWIMA-PC is still considered compliant with this
specification if it also reports metadata change events that do not
change the record itself as alterations to the record. In other
words, while SWIMA-PC authors are encouraged to exclude modifications
that do not affect the bytes within the record, discriminating
between modifications to file contents and changes to file metadata
can be difficult and time consuming on some systems. As such, as
long as the alterations detected by a SWIMA-PC always cover all
modifications to the contents of record, the SWIMA-PC is considered
compliant even if it also registers alterations that do not modify
the contents of a record as well. When recording an alteration to a
record, the SWIMA-PC is only required to note that an alteration
occurred. The SWIMA-PC is not required to note or record how the
record altered, nor is it possible to include such details in SWIMA
Attributes reporting the change to a SWIMA-PV. There is no need to
retain a copy of the original record prior to the alteration.
When a record changes it SHOULD retain the same Record Identifier.
The Software Locator might or might not change, depending on whether
the software changed locations during the changes that led to the
record change. A record change MUST retain the same Software
Identifier. This means that any action that changes a software
product (e.g., application of a patch that results in a change to the
product's version) MUST NOT be reflected by a record change but
instead MUST result in the deletion of the old record and the
creation of a new record. This reflects the requirement that a
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record in the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection
correspond directly with an instance of a specific software product.
3.7. Reporting Change Events
As noted in Section 3.6, SWIMA-PCs are required to detect changes to
the endpoints Software Inventory Evidence Collection (creation,
deletion, and alteration) in near real-time while the SWIMA-PC is
operational, and MUST be able to account for any net change to the
endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection that occurs when
the SWIMA-PC is not operational. However, to be of use to the
enterprise, the NEA Server needs to be able to receive these events
and be able to understand how new changes relate to earlier changes.
In SWIMA, this is facilitated by reporting change events. All SWIMA-
PCs MUST be capable of receiving requests for change events and
sending change event attributes. All SWIMA-PVs MUST be capable of
requesting and receiving change event attributes.
3.7.1. Event Identifiers
To be useful, change events need to be correctly ordered. Ordering
of events is facilitated by two pieces of information: an Event
Identifier (EID) value and an EID Epoch value.
An EID is a 4-byte unsigned integer that the SWIMA-PC assigns
sequentially to each observed event (whether detected in real-time or
deduced by looking for net changes over a period of SWIMA-PC
inactivity). All EIDs exist within the context of some "EID Epoch",
which is also represented as a 4-byte unsigned integer. EID Epochs
are used to ensure synchronization between the SWIMA-PC and any
SWIMA-PVs with which it communicates. EID Epoch values MUST be
generated in such a way as to minimize the chance that an EID Epoch
will be reused, even in the case where the SWIMA-PC reverts to an
earlier state. For this reason, sequential EID Epochs are
discouraged, since loss of state could result in value reuse. There
are multiple reasons that a SWIMA-PC might need to deliberately reset
its EID counter, including exhaustion of available EID values, the
need to purge entries from the event log to recover memory, or
corruption of the event log. In all case where a SWIMA-PC needs to
reset its EID counter, a new EID Epoch MUST be selected.
Within an Epoch, EIDs MUST be assigned sequentially, so that if a
particular event is assigned an EID of N, the next observed event is
given an EID of N+1. In some cases, events might occur
simultaneously, or the SWIMA-PC might not otherwise be able to
determine an ordering for events. In these cases, the SWIMA-PC
creates an arbitrary ordering of the events and assigns EIDs
according to this ordering. Two change events MUST NOT ever be
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assigned the same EID within the same EID Epoch. No meaningful
comparison can be made between EID values of different Epochs.
The EID value of 0 is reserved and MUST NOT be associated with any
event. Specifically, an EID of 0 in a SWIMA Request attribute
indicates that a SWIMA-PV wants an inventory response rather than an
event response, while an EID of 0 in a SWIMA Response is used to
indicate the initial state of the endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection prior to the observation of any events. Thus the
very first recorded event in a SWIMA-PC's records within an EID Epoch
MUST be assigned a value of 1. Note that EID and EID Epoch values
are assigned by the SWIMA-PC without regard to whether events are
being reported to one or more SWIMA-PVs. The SWIMA-PC records events
and assigns EIDs during its operation. All SWIMA-PVs that request
event information from the SWIMA-PC will have those requests served
from the same event records and thus will see the same EIDs and EID
Epochs for the same events.
If a SWIMA-PC uses multiple sources, a SWIMA-PC's assignment of EIDs
MUST reflect the presence and order of all events on the endpoint (at
least for supported sources) regardless of the source. This means
that if source A experiences an event, and then source B experiences
two events, and then source A experiences another two events, the
SWIMA-PC is required to capture five events with consecutive EID
values reflecting the order in which the events occur.
The SWIMA-PC MUST ensure there is no coverage gap (i.e., change
events that are not recorded in the SWIMA-PC's records) in its change
event records. This is necessary because a coverage gap might give a
SWIMA-PV a false impression of the endpoint's state. For example, if
a SWIMA-PV saw an event indicating that a particular record had been
added to the endpoint's software inventory evidence collection, and
saw no subsequent events indicating that record had been deleted, it
might reasonably assume that this record was still present and thus
that the indicated software was still installed (assuming the Epoch
has not changed). If there is a coverage gap in the SWIMA-PC's event
records, however, this assumption could be false. For this reason,
the SWIMA-PC's event records MUST NOT contain gaps. In the case
where there are periods where it is possible that changes occurred
without the SWIMA-PC detecting or recording them, the SWIMA-PC MUST
either compute a net change and update its event records
appropriately, or pick a new EID Epoch to indicate a discontinuity
with previous event records.
Within a given Epoch, once a particular event has been assigned an
EID, this association MUST NOT be changed. That is, within an Epoch,
once an EID is assigned to an event, that EID cannot be reassigned to
a different event, and the event cannot be assigned a different EID.
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When the SWIMA-PC's Epoch changes, all of these associations between
EIDs and events are cancelled, and EID values once again become free
for assignment.
3.7.2. Core Event Tracking Information
Whether reporting events or full inventories it is important to know
how the reported information fits into the overall timeline of change
events. This is why all SWIMA Response attributes include fields to
place that response within the sequence of detected events.
Specifically, all SWIMA Responses include a Last EID and EID Epoch
field. The EID Epoch field identifies the EID Epoch in which the
SWIMA Response was sent. If the SWIMA Response is reporting events,
all reported events occurred within the named EID Epoch. The Last
EID (which is also always from the named EID Epoch) indicates the EID
of the last recorded change event at the time that the SWIMA Response
was sent. These two fields allow any response to be placed in the
context of the complete set of detected change events within a given
EID Epoch.
3.7.3. Updating Inventory Knowledge Based on Events
Modern endpoints can have hundreds of software products installed,
most of which are unlikely to change from one day to the next. As
such, instead of exchanging a complete list of an endpoint's
inventory on a regular basis, one might wish to only identify changes
since some earlier known state of this inventory. This is readily
facilitated by the use of EIDs to place change events in a context
relative to earlier state.
As noted above, every SWIMA Response sent by a SWIMA-PC to a SWIMA-PV
(as described in Section 3.3 through Section 3.5) includes the EID
Epoch and EID of the last event recorded prior to that response being
compiled. This allows the SWIMA-PV to place all subsequently
received event records in context relative to this SWIMA Response
attribute (since the EIDs represent a total ordering of all changes
to the endpoint's software inventory evidence collection).
Specifically, a SWIMA-PV (or, more likely, a database that collects
and records its findings) can record an endpoint's full inventory and
also the EID and Epoch of the most recent event reflected at the time
of that inventory. From that point on, if change events are
observed, the attribute describing these events indicates the nature
of the change, the affected records, and the order in which these
events occurred (as indicated by the sequential EIDs). Using this
information, any remote record of the endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection can be updated appropriately.
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3.7.4. Using Event Records in SWIMA Attributes
A SWIMA-PV MUST be able to request a list of event records instead of
an inventory. The attribute flow in such an exchange looks the same
as the basic flow shown in Figure 2. The only difference is that, in
the SWIMA Request attribute, the SWIMA-PV provides an EID other than
0. (A value of 0 in these fields represents a request for an
inventory.) When the SWIMA-PC receives such a request, instead of
identifying records from the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection, it consults its list of detected changes. The SWIMA-PC
MUST add an event record to the SWIMA Response attribute for each
recorded change event with an EID greater than or equal to the EID in
the SWIMA Request attribute (although targeting of requests, as
described in the next paragraph, might limit this list). A list of
event records MUST only contain events with EIDs that all come from
the current Epoch.
SWIMA-PVs can target requests for event records by including one or
more Software Identifiers, as described in Section 3.5, in the SWIMA
Request that requests an event record list. A targeted request for
event records is used to indicate that only events affecting software
that matches one of the provided Software Identifiers are to be
returned. Specifically, in response to a targeted request for event
records, the SWIMA-PC MUST exclude any event records that are less
than the indicated EID (within the current EID Epoch) and exclude any
event records where the affected software does not match one of the
provided Software Identifiers. This might mean that the resulting
list of event records sent in the response attribute does not provide
a continuous sequence of EIDs. Both SWIMA-PCs and SWIMA-PVs MUST
support targeted request for event records.
3.7.5. Partial and Complete Lists of Event Records in SWIMA Attributes
Over time, a SWIMA-PC might record a large number of change events.
If a SWIMA-PV requests all change events covering a large period of
time, the resulting SWIMA Response attribute might be extremely
large, especially if the SWIMA-PV requests inclusion of software
inventory evidence records in the response. In the case that the
resulting attribute is too large to send (either because it exceeds
the 4GB attribute size limit imposed by the PA-TNC specification, or
because it exceeds some smaller size limit imposed on the SWIMA-PC)
the SWIMA-PC MAY send a partial list of event records back to the
SWIMA-PV.
Generation of a partial list of events in a SWIMA Response attribute
requires the SWIMA-PC to identify a "consulted range" of EIDs. A
consulted range is the set of event records that are examined for
inclusion in the SWIMA Response attribute and that are included in
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that attribute if applicable. Recall that, if a SWIMA Request is
targeted, only event records that involve the indicated software
would be applicable. (See Section 3.5 for more on Targeted Request.)
If a request is not targeted, all event records in the considered
range are applicable and included in the SWIMA Response attribute.
The lower bound of the consulted range MUST be the EID provided in
the SWIMA Request. (Recall that a SWIMA Request indicates a request
for event records by providing a non-0 EID value in the SWIMA
Request. See Section 3.7.4.) The upper bound of the consulted range
is the EID of the latest event record (as ordered by EID values) that
is included in the SWIMA Response attribute if it is applicable to
the request. The EID of this last event record is called the "Last
Consulted EID". The SWIMA-PC chooses this Last Consulted EID based
on the size of the event record list it is willing to provide to the
SWIMA-PV.
A partial result list MUST include all applicable event records
within the consulted range. This means that for any applicable event
record (i.e., any event record in an un-targeted request, or any
event record associated with software matching a requested Software
Identifier in a targeted request) whose EID is greater than or equal
to the EID provided in the SWIMA Request and whose EID is less than
or equal to the Last Consulted EID, that event record MUST be
included in the SWIMA Response conveying this partial list of event
records. This ensures that every partial list of event records is
always complete within its indicated range. Remember that, for
targeted requests, "complete" doesn't mean that all EIDs between the
range endpoints are present, but only that every matching EID between
the range endpoints is included.
All SWIMA Response attributes that convey event records include a
Last Consulted EID field. This is in addition to the EID Epoch and
Last EID fields that are present in all SWIMA Responses. Note that,
if responding to a targeted SWIMA Request, the SWIMA Response
attribute might not contain the event record whose EID matches the
Last Consulted EID value. For example, the last consulted EID record
might have been deemed inapplicable because it did not match the
specified list of Software Identifiers in the SWIMA Request.
If a SWIMA-PV receives a SWIMA Response attribute where the Last EID
and Last Consulted EID fields are identical, the SWIMA-PV knows that
it has received a result list that is complete, given the parameters
of the request, up to the present time.
On the other hand, if the Last EID is greater than the Last Consulted
EID, the SWIMA-PV has received a partial result list. (The Last
Consulted EID MUST NOT exceed the Last EID.) In this case, if the
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SWIMA-PV wishes to try to collect the rest of the partially delivered
result list it then sends a new SWIMA Request whose EID is one
greater than the Last Consulted EID in the preceding response. Doing
this causes the SWIMA-PC to generate another SWIMA Response attribute
containing event records where the earliest reported event record is
the one immediately after the event record with the Last Consulted
EID (since EIDs are assigned sequentially). By repeating this
process until it receives a SWIMA Response where the Last EID and
Last Consulted EID are equal, the SWIMA-PV is able to collect all
event records over a given range, even if the complete set of event
records would be too large to deliver via a single attribute.
Implementers need to be aware that a SWIMA Request might specify an
EID that is greater than the EID of the last event recorded by a
SWIMA-PC. In accordance with the behaviors described in
Section 3.7.4, a SWIMA-PC MUST respond to such a request with a SWIMA
Response attribute that contains zero event records. This is because
the SWIMA-PC has recorded no event records with EIDs greater than or
equal to the EID in the SWIMA Request. In such a case, the Last
Consulted EID field MUST be set to the same value as the Last EID
field in this SWIMA Response attribute. This case is called out
because the consulted range on a SWIMA-PC in such a situation is a
negative range, where the "first" EID in the range (provided in the
SWIMA Request) is greater than the "last" EID in the range (this
being the EID of the last recorded event on the SWIMA-PC).
Implementers need to ensure that SWIMA-PCs do not experience problems
in such a circumstance.
Note that this specification only supports the returning of partial
results when returning event records. There is no way to return a
partial inventory list under this specification.
3.7.6. Synchronizing Event Identifiers and Epochs
Since EIDs are sequential within an Epoch, if a SWIMA-PV's list of
event records contains gaps in the EID values within a single Epoch,
the SWIMA-PV knows that there are events that have not been accounted
for. The SWIMA-PV can either request a new event list to collect the
missing events or request a full inventory to re-sync its
understanding of the state of the endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection. In either case, after the SWIMA-PV's record of
the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection has been
updated, the SWIMA-PV can record the new latest EID value and track
events normally from that point on.
If the SWIMA-PV receives any attribute from a SWIMA-PC where the EID
Epoch differs from the EID Epoch that was used previously, then
SWIMA-PV or any entity using this information to track the endpoint's
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Software Inventory Evidence Collection knows that there is a
discontinuity in their understanding of the endpoint's state. To
move past this discontinuity and reestablish a current understanding
of the state of the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection, the SWIMA-PV needs to receive a full inventory from the
endpoint. The SWIMA-PV cannot be brought in sync with the endpoint's
state through the collection of any set of event records in this
situation. This is because it is not possible to account for all
events on the SWIMA-PC since the previous Epoch was used, because
there is no way to query for EIDs from a previous Epoch. Once the
SWIMA-PV has received a full inventory for the new Epoch, the SWIMA-
PV records the latest EID reported in this new Epoch and can track
further events normally.
A SWIMA-PC MUST NOT report events with EIDs from any Epoch other than
the current EID Epoch. The SWIMA-PC MAY choose to purge all event
records from a previous Epoch from memory after an Epoch change.
Alternately, the SWIMA-PC MAY choose to retain some event records
from a previous EID Epoch and assign them new EIDs in the current
Epoch. However, in the case where a SWIMA-PC chooses the latter
option it MUST ensure that the order of events according to their
EIDs is unchanged and that there is no coverage gap between the first
retained event recorded during the previous Epoch (now reassigned
with an EID in the current Epoch) and the first event recorded during
the current Epoch. In particular, the SWIMA-PC MUST ensure that all
change events that occurred after the last recorded event from the
previous Epoch are known and recorded. (This might not be possible
if the Epoch change is due to state corruption on the SWIMA-PC.) A
SWIMA-PC might choose to reassign EIDs to records from a preceding
Epoch to create a "sliding window" of events, where each Epoch change
represents a shift in the window of available events.
In the case where a SWIMA-PC suffers a crash and loses track of its
current EID Epoch or current EID, then it MUST generate a new EID
Epoch value and begin assigning EIDs within that Epoch. In this
case, the SWIMA-PC MUST purge all event records from before the crash
as it cannot ensure that there is not a gap between the last of those
records and the next detected event. The process for generating a
new EID Epoch MUST minimize the possibility that the newly generated
EID Epoch is the same as a previously used EID Epoch.
The SWIMA-PV will normally never receive an attribute indicating that
the latest EID is less than the latest EID reported in a previous
attribute within the same EID Epoch. If this occurs, the SWIMA-PC
has suffered an error of some kind, possibly indicative of at least
partial corruption of its event log. In this case, the SWIMA-PV MUST
treat the situation as if there was a change in Epoch and treat any
local copy of the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection
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as out-of-sync until a full inventory can be reported by the SWIMA-
PC. In this case, the SWIMA-PV SHOULD log the occurrence so the
SWIMA-PC can be examined to ensure it is now operating properly.
3.8. Subscriptions
Thus far, all attribute exchanges discussed assume that a SWIMA-PV
sent an SWIMA Request attribute and the SWIMA-PC is providing a
direct response to that request. The SWIMA specification also
supports the ability for a SWIMA-PC to send a SWIMA Response to the
SWIMA-PV in response to observed changes in the endpoint's software
inventory evidence collection, instead of in direct response to a
SWIMA Request. An agreement by a SWIMA-PC to send content when
certain changes are detected to the endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection is referred to in this specification as a
"subscription", and the SWIMA-PV that receives this content is said
to be "subscribed to" the given SWIMA-PC. All SWIMA-PCs and SWIMA-
PVs MUST support the use of subscriptions.
3.8.1. Establishing Subscriptions
A SWIMA-PV establishes a subscription on a particular SWIMA-PC by
sending a SWIMA Request attribute with the Subscription flag set.
The SWIMA Request attribute is otherwise identical to the SWIMA
Requests discussed in previous sections. Specifically, such a SWIMA
Request might or might not request inclusion of software inventory
evidence records, might or might not be targeted, and might request
change event records or endpoint inventory. Assuming no error is
encountered, a SWIMA-PC MUST send a SWIMA Response attribute in
direct response to this SWIMA Request attribute, just as if the
Subscription flag was not set. As such, the attribute exchange that
establishes a new subscription in a SWIMA-PC has the same flow seen
in the previous attribute exchanges, as depicted in Figure 2. If the
SWIMA-PV does not receive a PA-TNC Error attribute (as described in
Section 3.9 and Section 5.16) in response to their subscription
request, the subscription has been successfully established on the
SWIMA-PC. The SWIMA Request attribute that establishes a new
subscription is referred to as the "establishing request" for that
subscription.
When a subscription is established it is assigned a Subscription ID
value. The Subscription ID is equal to the value of the Request ID
of the establishing request. (For more about Request IDs, see
Section 5.6.)
A SWIMA-PC MUST have the ability to record and support at least 8
simultaneous subscriptions and SHOULD have the ability to support
more than this. These subscriptions might all come from a single
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SWIMA-PV, might all be from different SWIMA-PVs, or might be a mix.
In the case that a SWIMA-PC receives a subscription request but is
unable to support an additional subscription, it MUST respond to the
request with a PA-TNC Error attribute of type
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR.
A SWIMA-PV MUST have the ability to record and support at least 256
simultaneous subscriptions and SHOULD have the ability to support
more than this. Any number of these subscriptions might be to the
same SWIMA-PC and any number of these subscriptions might be to
different SWIMA-PCs.
3.8.2. Managing Subscriptions
The SWIMA-PC MUST record each accepted subscription along with the
identity of the party to whom attributes are to be pushed in
compliance with the subscription. This identity includes both the
NEA Server's connection ID and the Posture Validator Identifier from
the PB-PA message that delivered the request.
Likewise, SWIMA-PVs MUST record each accepted subscription for which
they are the subscribing party along with the associated Subscription
ID and the identity of the SWIMA-PC that will be fulfilling the
subscription. The SWIMA-PV needs to retain this information in order
to correctly interpret pushed SWIMA Response attributes sent in
fulfillment of the subscription. The identity of the SWIMA-PC is
given in the Posture Collector Identifier of the PB-PA message header
in all messages from that SWIMA-PC.
3.8.3. Terminating Subscriptions
Subscriptions MAY be terminated at any time by the subscribing SWIMA-
PV by setting the Clear Subscriptions flag in a SWIMA Request. (See
Section 5.7 for more on using this flag.) In the case that a SWIMA
Request with the Clear Subscriptions flag set is received the SWIMA-
PC MUST only clear subscriptions that match both the NEA server
connection ID and the SWIMA-PV ID for this SWIMA Request, and MUST
clear all such subscriptions.
This specification does not give the SWIMA-PV the ability to
terminate subscriptions individually - all subscriptions to the
SWIMA-PV are cleared when the Clear Subscriptions flag is set.
This specification does not give the SWIMA-PC the ability to
unilaterally terminate a subscription. However, if the SWIMA-PC
experiences a fatal error fulfilling a subscription, resulting in
sending a PA-TNC Error attribute of type
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR, then the subscription whose
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fulfillment led to the error MUST be treated as terminated by both
the SWIMA-PC and the SWIMA-PV. Only the subscription experiencing
the error is cancelled and other subscriptions are unaffected. See
Section 3.9 for more on this error condition.
Finally, a subscription is terminated if the connection between the
SWIMA-PC and SWIMA-PV is deleted. This occurs when the connection ID
used in the messages between the SWIMA-PC and the SWIMA-PV becomes
unbound. Loss of this connection ID would prevent the SWIMA-PC from
sending messages in fulfillment of this subscription. As such, loss
of the connection ID necessarily forces subscription termination
between the affected parties.
3.8.4. Subscription Status
A SWIMA-PV can request that a SWIMA-PC report the list of active
subscriptions for which the SWIMA-PV is the subscriber. A SWIMA-PV
can use this to recover lost information about active subscriptions.
A SWIMA-PV can also use this capability to verify that a SWIMA-PC has
not forgotten any of its subscriptions. The latter is especially
useful where a SWIMA-PC does not send any attributes in fulfillment
of a given subscription for a long period of time. The SWIMA-PV can
check the list of active subscriptions on the SWIMA-PC and verify
whether the inactivity is due to a lack of reportable events or due
to the SWIMA-PC forgetting its obligations to fulfill a given
subscription.
A SWIMA-PV requests a list of its subscriptions on a given SWIMA-PC
by sending that SWIMA-PC a Subscription Status Request. The SWIMA-PC
MUST then respond with a Subscription Status Response (or a PA-TNC
Error if an error condition is experienced). The Subscription Status
Response MUST contain one subscription record for each of the active
subscriptions for which the SWIMA-PV is the subscribing party.
3.8.5. Fulfilling Subscriptions
As noted in Section 3.6 SWIMA-PCs are required to automatically
detect changes to an endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection in near real-time. For every active subscription, the
SWIMA-PC MUST send an attribute to the subscribed SWIMA-PV whenever a
change is detected to relevant records within the endpoint's Software
Inventory Evidence Collection. Such an attribute is said to be sent
"in fulfillment of" the given subscription and any such attribute
MUST include that subscription's Subscription ID. If the
establishing request for that subscription was a targeted request,
then only records that match the Software Identifiers provided in
that establishing request are considered relevant. Otherwise, (i.e.,
for non-targeted requests) any record is considered relevant for this
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purpose. Figure 3 shows a sample attribute exchange where a
subscription is established and then later attributes are sent from
the SWIMA-PC in fulfillment of the established subscription.
+-------------+ +--------------+
| SWIMA-PC | | SWIMA-PV | Time
+-------------+ +--------------+ |
| | |
|<----------SWIMA Request-----------| |
| | |
|-----------SWIMA Response--------->| |
| | |
. . .
. . .
. . .
<Change Event>| | |
|----------SWIMA Response---------->| |
| | |
. . .
. . .
. . .
<Change Event>| | |
|----------SWIMA Response---------->| |
| | V
Figure 3: Subscription Establishment and Fulfillment
The contents of an attribute sent in fulfillment of a subscription
depend on the parameters provided in the establishing request for
that subscription. Specifically, the contents of an attribute sent
in fulfillment of a subscription have the same format as would a
direct response to the establishing request. For example, if the
establishing request stipulated a response that contained an event
record list that included software inventory evidence records, all
attributes sent in fulfillment of this subscription will also consist
of event record lists with software inventory evidence records. As
such, all SWIMA Responses displayed in the exchange depicted in
Figure 3 have the same format. A SWIMA Response generated in
fulfillment of an active subscription MUST be a valid SWIMA Response
attribute according to all the rules outlined in the preceding
sections. In other words, an attribute constructed in fulfillment of
a subscription will look the same as an attribute sent in direct
response to an explicit request from a SWIMA-PV that had the same
request parameters and which arrived immediately after the given
change event. There are a few special rules that expand on this
guideline:
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3.8.5.1. Subscriptions Reporting Inventories
In the case that a SWIMA-PV subscribes to a SWIMA-PC requesting an
inventory attribute whenever changes are detected (i.e., the EID in
the establishing request is 0), then the SWIMA-PC MUST send the
requested inventory whenever a relevant change is detected. (A
"relevant change" is any change for untargeted requests, or a change
to an indicated record in a targeted request.) Upon detection of a
relevant change for an active subscription, the SWIMA-PC sends the
appropriate inventory information as if it had just received the
establishing request. Attributes sent in fulfillment of this
subscription will probably have a large amount of redundancy, as the
same records are likely to be present in each of these SWIMA
Attributes. The role of an inventory subscription is not to report
records just for the items that changed - that is the role of a
subscription that reports events (see Section 3.8.5.2). A SWIMA-PC
MUST NOT exclude a record from an attribute sent in fulfillment of an
inventory subscription simply because that record was not involved in
the triggering event (although a record might be excluded for other
reasons, such as if the subscription is targeted - see
Section 3.8.5.3).
3.8.5.2. Subscriptions Reporting Events
The way in which a SWIMA-PV indicates it wishes to establish a
subscription requesting event records is by providing a non-zero EID
in the SWIMA Request establishing the subscription (see
Section 3.7.1). However, when the SWIMA-PC constructs an attribute
in fulfillment of the subscription (other than the direct response to
the establishing request), it MUST only include event records for the
detected change(s) that precipitated this response attribute. In
other words, it MUST NOT send a complete list of all changes starting
with the establishing request's EID, up through the latest change,
every time a new event is detected. In effect, the EID in the
establishing request is treated as being updated every time an
attribute is sent in fulfillment of this subscription, such that a
single event is not reported twice in fulfillment of a single
subscription. As such, every SWIMA-PC MUST track the EID of the last
event that triggered an attribute for the given subscription. When
the next event (or set of events) is detected, the SWIMA-PC MUST only
report events with EIDs after the last reported event. In the case
that the EID Epoch of the SWIMA-PC changes, the SWIMA-PC MUST reset
this EID tracker to 0 (if the event log is completely purged) or to
the new EID of the last reported retained event (if the event log is
partially purged to create a "sliding window"). Doing this ensures
that the SWIMA-PC continues to only send events that have not been
previously reported.
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Note that while a subscription is active, the subscribing SWIMA-PV
MAY make other requests for event records that overlap with events
that are reported in fulfillment of a subscription. Such requests
are unaffected by the presence of the subscription, nor is the
subscription affected by such requests. In other words, a given
request will get the same results back whether or not there was a
subscription. Likewise, an attribute sent in fulfillment of a
subscription will contain the same information whether or not other
requests had been received from the SWIMA-PV.
A SWIMA-PV needs to pay attention to the EID Epoch in these
attributes, as changes in the Epoch might create discontinuities in
the SWIMA-PV's understanding of the endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection state, as discussed in Section 3.7.6. In
particular, once the EID Epoch changes, a SWIMA-PV is unable to have
confidence that it has a correct understanding of the state of an
endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection until after the
SWIMA-PV collects a complete inventory.
SWIMA-PCs MAY send partial lists of event records in fulfillment of a
subscription. (See Section 3.7.5 for more on partial list of event
records.) In the case that a SWIMA-PC sends a partial list of event
records in fulfillment of a subscription, it MUST immediately send
the next consecutive partial list, and continue doing so until it has
sent the equivalent of the complete list of event records. In other
words, if the SWIMA-PC sends a partial list it does not wait for
another change event to send another SWIMA Response, but continues
sending SWIMA Responses until it has sent all event records that
would have been included in a complete fulfillment of the
subscription. Note that the direct response to the establishing
request is not considered to be sent in fulfillment of a
subscription. However, in this case the SWIMA-PC MUST treat the
presence of unreported events as a triggering event for pushing
additional messages in fulfillment of the newly established
subscription. As such, the net effect is that, if the direct
response to the establishing request (i.e., the Subscription
Fulfillment flag is unset) is partial, the SWIMA-PC will immediately
follow this with additional attributes (with the Subscription
Fulfillment flag set) until the complete set of events has been sent
to the SWIMA-PV.
3.8.5.3. Targeted Subscriptions
Subscriptions MAY be targeted to only apply to records that match a
given set of Software Identifiers. In the case where changes are
detected that affect multiple records, some matching the establishing
request's Software Identifiers and some not, the attribute sent in
fulfillment of the subscription MUST only include inventory or events
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(as appropriate) for records that match the establishing request's
Software Identifiers. The SWIMA-PC MUST NOT include non-matching
records in the attribute, even if those non-matching records
experienced change events that were co-temporal with change events on
the matching records.
In addition, a SWIMA-PC MUST send an attribute in fulfillment of a
targeted subscription only when changes to the endpoint's Software
Inventory Evidence Collection impact one or more records matching the
subscription's establishing request's Software Identifiers. A SWIMA-
PC MUST NOT send any attribute in fulfillment of a targeted
subscription based on detected change to the endpoint's Software
Inventory Evidence Collection that did not involve any of the records
targeted by that subscription.
3.8.5.4. No Subscription Consolidation
A SWIMA-PV MAY establish multiple subscriptions to a given SWIMA-PC.
If this is the case, it is possible that a single change event on the
endpoint might require fulfillment by multiple subscriptions, and
that the information included in attributes that fulfill each of
these subscriptions might overlap. The SWIMA-PC MUST send separate
attributes for each established subscription that requires a response
due to the given event. Each of these attributes MUST contain all
information required to fulfill that individual subscription, even if
that information is also sent in other attributes sent in fulfillment
of other subscriptions at the same time. In other words, SWIMA-PCs
MUST NOT attempt to combine information when fulfilling multiple
subscriptions simultaneously, even if this results in some redundancy
in the attributes sent to the SWIMA-PV.
3.8.5.5. Delayed Subscription Fulfillment
A SWIMA-PC MAY delay the fulfillment of a subscription following a
change event in the interest of waiting to see if additional change
events are forthcoming and, if so, conveying the relevant records
back to the SWIMA-PV in a single SWIMA Response attribute. This can
help reduce network bandwidth consumption between the SWIMA-PC and
the SWIMA-PV. For example, consider a situation where 10 changes
occur a tenth of a second apart. If the SWIMA-PC does not delay in
assembling and sending SWIMA Response attributes, the SWIMA-PV will
receive 10 separate SWIMA Response attributes over a period of 1
second. However, if the SWIMA-PC waits half a second after the
initial event before assembling a SWIMA Response, the SWIMA-PV only
receives two SWIMA Response attributes over the same period of time.
Note that the ability to consolidate events for a single subscription
over a given period of time does not contradict the rules in
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Section 3.8.5.4 prohibiting consolidation across multiple
subscriptions. When delaying fulfillment of subscriptions, SWIMA-PCs
are still required to fulfill each individual subscription
separately. Moreover, in the case that change events within the
delay window cancel each other out (e.g., a record is deleted and
then re-added), the SWIMA-PC MUST still report each change event
rather than just reporting the net effect of changes over the delay
period. In other words, delayed fulfillment can decrease the number
of attributes send by the SWIMA-PC, but it does not reduce the total
number of change events reported.
SWIMA-PCs are not required to support delayed fulfillment of
subscriptions. However, in the case that the SWIMA-PC does support
delayed subscription fulfillment, it MUST be possible to configure
the SWIMA-PC to disable delayed fulfillment. In other words, parties
deploying SWIMA-PCs need to be allowed to disable delayed
subscription fulfillment in their SWIMA-PCs. The manner in which
such configuration occurs is left to the discretion of implementers,
although implementers MUST protect the configuration procedure from
unauthorized tampering. In other words, there needs to be some
assurance that unauthorized individuals are not able to introduce
long delays in subscription fulfillment.
3.9. Error Handling
In the case where the SWIMA-PC detects an error in a SWIMA Request
attribute that it receives it MUST respond with a PA-TNC Error
attribute with an error code appropriate to the nature of the error.
(See Section 4.2.8 of PA-TNC [RFC5792] for more details about PA-TNC
Error attributes and error codes as well as Section 5.16 in this
specification for error codes specific to SWIMA Attributes.) In the
case that an error is detected in a SWIMA Request the SWIMA-PC MUST
NOT take any action requested by this SWIMA Request, even if partial
completion of the request is possible. In other words, a SWIMA
Request that contains an error is completely ignored by the SWIMA-PC
(beyond sending a PA-TNC Error attribute, and possibly logging the
error locally) rather than being partially executed.
In the case where the SWIMA-PC receives a valid SWIMA Request
attribute but experiences an error during the process of responding
to that attribute's instructions where that error prevents the SWIMA-
PC from properly or completely fulfilling that request, the SWIMA-PC
MUST send a PA-TNC Error attribute with an error code appropriate to
the nature of the error. In the case where a PA-TNC Error attribute
is sent, the SWIMA-PC MUST NOT take any of the actions requested by
the SWIMA Request attribute which led to the detected error. This is
the case even if some actions could have been completed successfully,
and might even require the SWIMA-PC to reverse some successful
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actions already taken before the error condition was detected. In
other words, either all aspects of a SWIMA Request complete fully and
successfully (in which case the SWIMA-PC sends a SWIMA Response
attribute), or no aspects of the SWIMA Request occur (in which case
the SWIMA-PC sends a PA-TNC Error attribute). In the case that a
SWIMA-PC sends a PA-TNC Error attribute in response to a SWIMA
Request then the SWIMA-PC MUST NOT also send any SWIMA Response
attribute in response to the same SWIMA Request. For this reason,
the sending of a SWIMA Response attribute MUST be the last action
taken by a SWIMA-PC in response to a SWIMA Request to avoid the
possibility of a processing error occurring after that SWIMA Response
attribute is sent.
In the case that the SWIMA-PC detects an error that prevents it from
properly or completely fulfilling its obligations under an active
subscription, the SWIMA-PC MUST send a PA-TNC Error attribute of type
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR to the SWIMA-PV that established
this subscription. This type of PA-TNC Error attribute identifies
the specific subscription that cannot be adequately honored due to
the error condition as well as an error "sub-type". The error sub-
type is used to indicate the type of error condition the SWIMA-PC
experienced that prevented it from honoring the given subscription.
In the case that the error condition cannot be identified or does not
align with any of the defined error codes, the SWIMA_ERROR error code
SHOULD be used in the sub-type. In the case that a
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR is sent, the associated
subscription MUST be treated as cancelled by both the SWIMA-PC and
SWIMA-PV.
The SWIMA-PV MUST NOT send any PA-TNC Error attributes to SWIMA-PCs.
In the case that a SWIMA-PV detects an error condition, it SHOULD log
this error but does not inform any SWIMA-PC's of this event. Errors
might include, but are not limited to, detection of malformed SWIMA
Response attributes sent from a given SWIMA-PC, as well as detection
of error conditions when the SWIMA-PV processes SWIMA Responses.
Both SWIMA-PCs and SWIMA-PVs SHOULD log errors so that administrators
can trace the causes of errors. Log entries SHOULD include the type
of the error, the time it was detected, and additional descriptive
information to aid in understanding the nature and cause of the
error. Logs are an important debugging tool and implementers are
strongly advised to include comprehensive logging capabilities in
their products.
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4. Protocol
The software inventory protocol supports two different types of
message exchanges which are described the following subsections,
along with implementation requirements for supporting these
exchanges.
4.1. Direct Response to a SWIMA Request
The first type of exchange is used to provide the SWIMA-PV with a
software inventory or event collection from the queried endpoint.
+-------------+ +--------------+
| SWIMA-PC | | SWIMA-PV | Time
+-------------+ +--------------+ |
| | |
|<-----------SWIMA Request------------| |
| | |
| SWIMA Response* | |
|-----------------or----------------->| |
| PA-TNC Error | |
| | V
*SWIMA Response is one of the following: Software Identifier
Inventory, Software Identifier Events, Software Inventory,
or Software Events.
Figure 4: SWIMA Attribute Exchange (Direct Response to SWIMA Request)
In this exchange, the SWIMA-PV indicates to the SWIMA-PC, via a SWIMA
Request, the nature of the information it wishes to receive
(inventory vs. events, full or targeted) and how it wishes the
returned inventory to be expressed (with or without software
inventory evidence records). The SWIMA-PC responds with the
requested information using the appropriate attribute type. A single
SWIMA Request MUST only lead to a single SWIMA Response or PA-TNC
Error that is in direct response to that request.
4.2. Subscription-Based Response
The second type of exchange allows change event-based reporting based
on a subscription. If there is an active subscription on the
endpoint, the SWIMA-PC sends a SWIMA Response to the SWIMA-PV
following a change event on the endpoint in fulfillment of that
subscription. Such an exchange is shown in Figure 5.
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+-------------+ +--------------+
| SWIMA-PC | | SWIMA-PV | Time
+-------------+ +--------------+ |
| | |
<Change Event>| | |
|------SWIMA Response(s)*------>| |
| | |
*SWIMA Response is one of the following: Software Identifier
Inventory, Software Identifier Events, Software Inventory,
or Software Events.
Figure 5: SWIMA Attribute Exchange (In Fulfillment of an Active
Subscription)
Note that, unlike direct responses to a SWIMA Request, a single
change event can precipitate multiple SWIMA Responses for a single
subscription, but only if all but the last of those SWIMA Responses
convey partial lists of event records. When providing multiple SWIMA
Responses in this way, the initial responses contain partial lists of
event records and the last of those SWIMA Responses conveys the
remainder of the relevant event records, completing the delivery of
all relevant events in response to the change event. A single Change
Event MUST NOT otherwise be followed by multiple SWIMA Response or
PA-TNC Error attributes in any combination.
4.3. Required Exchanges
All SWIMA-PVs and SWIMA-PCs MUST support both types of exchanges. In
particular, SWIMA-PCs MUST be capable of pushing a SWIMA Response to
a SWIMA-PV immediately upon detection of a change to the endpoint's
Software Inventory Evidence Collection in fulfillment of established
SWIMA-PV subscriptions, as described in Section 3.8.
5. Software Inventory Messages and Attributes
This section describes the format and semantics of the SWIMA
protocol. This protocol uses the PA-TNC message header format
[RFC5792].
5.1. PA Subtype (AKA PA-TNC Component Type)
The NEA PB-TNC interface provides a general message-batching protocol
capable of carrying one or more PA-TNC messages between the Posture
Broker Client and Posture Broker Server. When PB-TNC is carrying a
PA-TNC message, the PB-TNC message headers contain a 32 bit
identifier called the PA Subtype. The PA Subtype field indicates the
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type of component associated with all of the PA-TNC attributes
carried by the PB-TNC message. The core set of PA Subtypes is
defined in the PA-TNC specification. This specification defines a
new "SWIMA Attributes" PA Subtype, which is registered in
Section 10.1 of this document, which is used as a namespace for the
collection of SWIMA Attributes defined in this document.
For more information on PB-TNC and PA-TNC messages and message
headers, see the PB-TNC [RFC5793] and PA-TNC [RFC5792]
specifications, respectively.
5.2. SWIMA Attribute Overview
Each PA-TNC attribute described in this specification is intended to
be sent between the SWIMA-PC and SWIMA-PV, so will be carried in a
PB-TNC message indicating a PA Subtype of "SWIMA Attributes". PB-TNC
messages MUST always include the SWIMA Attributes Subtype defined in
Section 5.1 when carrying SWIMA Attributes over PA-TNC. The
attributes defined in this specification appear below along with a
short summary of their purposes.
PA-TNC attribute types are identified in the PA-TNC Attribute Header
via the Attribute Type Vendor ID and Attribute Type fields. Table 1
identifies the appropriate values for these fields for each attribute
type used within the SWIMA protocol. All attributes have a PEN value
of 0x000000. For the Integer value field, both the hexadecimal and
decimal values are provided. Each attribute is described in greater
detail in subsequent sections identified in the attribute
description.
+--------------+------------+---------------------------------------+
| Attribute | Integer | Description |
| Name | | |
+--------------+------------+---------------------------------------+
| SWIMA | 0x0000000D | Request sent from a SWIMA-PV to a |
| Request | (13) | SWIMA-PC for the SWIMA-PC to provide |
| | | a software inventory or event list. |
| | | It might also establish a |
| | | subscription. (Section 5.7) |
| | | |
| Software | 0x0000000E | An inventory sent without software |
| Identifier | (14) | inventory evidence records sent from |
| Inventory | | a SWIMA-PC. (Section 5.8) |
| | | |
| Software | 0x0000000F | A collection of events impacting the |
| Identifier | (15) | endpoint's Software Inventory |
| Events | | Evidence Collection, where events do |
| | | not include software inventory |
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| | | evidence records. (Section 5.9) |
| | | |
| Software | 0x00000010 | An inventory including software |
| Inventory | (16) | inventory evidence records sent from |
| | | a SWIMA-PC. (Section 5.10) |
| | | |
| Software | 0x00000011 | A collection of events impacting the |
| Events | (17) | endpoint's Software Inventory |
| | | Evidence Collection, where events |
| | | include software inventory evidence |
| | | records. (Section 5.11) |
| | | |
| Subscription | 0x00000012 | A request for a list of a SWIMA-PV's |
| Status | (18) | active subscription on a SWIMA-PC. |
| Request | | (Section 5.12) |
| | | |
| Subscription | 0x00000013 | A list of a SWIMA-PV's active |
| Status | (19) | subscriptions on a SWIMA-PC. (Section |
| Response | | 5.13) |
| | | |
| Source | 0x00000014 | A request for information about a |
| Metadata | (20) | SWIMA-PC's data sources. (Section |
| Request | | 5.14) |
| | | |
| Subscription | 0x00000015 | Descriptive metadata about a SWIMA- |
| Metadata | (21) | PC's data sources. (Section 5.15) |
| Response | | |
| | | |
| PA-TNC Error | 0x00000008 | An error attribute as defined in the |
| | (8) | PA-TNC specification [RFC5792]. |
+--------------+------------+---------------------------------------+
Table 1: SWIMA Attribute Enumeration
Because one of the Software Identifier Inventory, Software Identifier
Events, Software Inventory, or Software Events attributes are
expected to be sent to a SWIMA-PV in direct response to a SWIMA
Request attribute or in fulfillment of an active subscription, those
four attribute types are referred to collectively in this document as
"SWIMA Response attributes".
All SWIMA-PVs MUST be capable of sending SWIMA Request attributes and
be capable of receiving and processing all SWIMA Response attributes
as well as PA-TNC Error attributes. All SWIMA-PCs MUST be capable of
receiving and processing SWIMA Request attributes and be capable of
sending all types of SWIMA Response attributes as well as PA-TNC
Error attributes. In other words, both SWIMA-PVs and SWIMA-PCs are
required to support their role in exchanges using any of the
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attribute types defined in this section. SWIMA-PVs MUST ignore any
SWIMA Request attributes that they receive. SWIMA-PCs MUST ignore
any SWIMA Response attributes or PA-TNC Error attributes that they
receive.
5.3. Message Diagram Syntax
This specification defines the syntax of new PA-TNC messages and
attributes using diagrams. Each diagram depicts the format and size
of each field in bits. Implementations MUST send the bits in each
diagram as they are shown from left to right for each 32-bit quantity
traversing the diagram from top to bottom. Fields representing
numeric values MUST be sent in network (big endian) byte order.
Descriptions of bit fields (e.g., flags) values refer to the position
of the bit within the field. These bit positions are numbered from
the most significant bit through the least significant bit. As such,
an octet with only bit 0 set would have a value of 0x80 (1000 0000),
an octet with only bit 1 set would have a value of 0x40 (0100 0000),
and an octet with only bit 7 set would have a value of 0x01 (0000
0001).
5.4. SWIMA Attribute Enumeration
5.5. Normalization of Text Encoding
In order to ensure consistency of transmitted attributes some fields
require normalization of their format. When this is necessary, this
is indicated in the field's description. In such cases, the field
contents MUST be normalized to Network Unicode format as defined in
RFC 5198 [RFC5198]. Network Unicode format defines a refinement of
UTF-8 [RFC3629] that ensures a normalized expression of characters.
SWIMA-PCs and SWIMA-PVs MUST NOT perform conversion and normalization
on any field values except those specifically identified as requiring
normalization in the following sections. Note, however, that some
data models require additional normalization before source
information is added to an Endpoint's Inventory Evidence Collection
as a record. The references from the Software Data Model IANA table
(see Section 10.4) will note where this is necessary.
5.6. Request IDs
All SWIMA Request attributes MUST include a Request ID value. The
Request ID field provides a value that identifies a given request
relative to other requests between a SWIMA-PV and the receiving
SWIMA-PC. Specifically, the SWIMA-PV assigns each SWIMA Request
attribute a Request ID value that is intended to be unique within the
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lifetime of a given network connection ID as assigned by the SWIMA-
PV's Posture Broker Server.
In the case that a SWIMA Request requests the establishment of a
subscription and the receiving SWIMA-PC agrees to that subscription,
the Request ID of that SWIMA Request (i.e., the establishing request
of the subscription) becomes that subscription's Subscription ID.
All attributes sent in fulfillment of this subscription include a
flag indicating that the attribute fulfills a subscription and the
subscription's Subscription ID. A SWIMA-PV MUST NOT reuse a Request
ID value in communicating to a given SWIMA-PC while that Request ID
is also serving as a Subscription ID for an active subscription with
that SWIMA-PC. In the case where a SWIMA-PC receives a SWIMA Request
from a given SWIMA-PV where that Request ID is also the Subscription
ID of an active subscription with that SWIMA-PV, the SWIMA-PC MUST
respond with a PA-TNC Error attribute with an error code of
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_ID_REUSE_ERROR. Note that this error does not
cancel the indicated subscription.
Subscription Status Requests and Subscription Status Responses do not
include Request IDs.
In the case where all possible Request ID values have been exhausted
within the lifetime of a single network connection ID, the sender MAY
reuse previously used Request IDs within the same network connection
if the ID is not being used as a Subscription ID. In such a case of
Request ID reuse, Request IDs SHOULD be reused in the order of their
original use. In other words, a SWIMA-PC SHOULD NOT use a given
Request ID value more than once within a persistent connection
between a given Posture Broker Client-Posture Broker Server pair. In
the case where reuse is necessary due to exhaustion of possible ID
values, the SWIMA-PC SHOULD structure the reuse to maximize the time
between original and subsequent use. The Request ID value is
included in a SWIMA Response attribute directly responding to this
SWIMA Request to indicate which SWIMA Request was received and caused
the response. Request IDs can be randomly generated or sequential,
as long as values are not repeated per the rules in this paragraph.
SWIMA-PCs are not required to check for duplicate Request IDs.
5.7. SWIMA Request
A SWIMA-PV sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PC to request that the
SWIMA-PC send software inventory information to the SWIMA-PV. A
SWIMA-PC MUST NOT send this attribute.
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1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Flags | Software Identifier Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Request ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Earliest EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Software Identifier Count" times) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 6: SWIMA Request Attribute
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Identifier Length | Software Identifier (var len) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 7: SWIMA Request Attribute SUB-BLOCK
+---------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+---------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Flags: Bit 0 | If set (1), the SWIMA-PC MUST delete all |
| - Clear | subscriptions established by the requesting |
| Subscriptions | SWIMA-PV (barring any errors). |
| | |
| Flags: Bit 1 | If set (1), in addition to responding to the |
| - Subscribe | request as described, the SWIMA-PC MUST establish |
| | a subscription with parameters matching those in |
| | the request attribute (barring any errors). |
| | |
| Flags: Bit 2 | If unset (0), the SWIMA-PC's response MUST |
| - Result Type | include software inventory evidence records and |
| | thus the response MUST be a Software Inventory, a |
| | Software Events, or a PA-TNC Error attribute. If |
| | set (1), the response MUST NOT include software |
| | inventory evidence records and thus the response |
| | MUST be a Software Identifier Inventory, a |
| | Software Identifier Events, or a PA-TNC Error |
| | attribute. |
| | |
| Flags: Bit | Reserved for future use. This field MUST be set |
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| 3-7 - | to zero on transmission and ignored upon |
| Reserved | reception. |
| | |
| Software | A 3-byte unsigned integer indicating the number |
| Identifier | of Software Identifiers that follow. If this |
| Count | value is non-zero, this is a targeted request, as |
| | described in Section 3.5. The Software |
| | Identifier Length and Software Identifier fields |
| | are repeated, in order, the number of times |
| | indicated in this field. In the case where |
| | Software Identifiers are present, the SWIMA-PC |
| | MUST only report software that corresponds to the |
| | identifiers the SWIMA-PV provided in this |
| | attribute (or with a PA-TNC Error attribute). |
| | This field value MAY be 0, in which case there |
| | are no instances of the Software Identifier |
| | Length and Software Identifier fields. In this |
| | case, the SWIMA-PV is indicating an interest in |
| | all software inventory evidence records on the |
| | endpoint (i.e., this is not a targeted request). |
| | |
| Request ID | A value that uniquely identifies this SWIMA |
| | Request from a particular SWIMA-PV. |
| | |
| Earliest EID | In the case where the SWIMA-PV is requesting |
| | software events, this field contains the EID |
| | value of the earliest event the SWIMA-PV wishes |
| | to have reported. (Note - the report will be |
| | inclusive of the event with this EID value.) In |
| | the case where the SWIMA-PV is requesting an |
| | inventory, then this field MUST be 0. |
| | (0x00000000) In the case where this field is non- |
| | zero, the SWIMA-PV is requesting events and the |
| | SWIMA-PC MUST respond using a Software Events, |
| | Software Identifier Events, or a PA-TNC Error |
| | attribute. In the case where this field is zero, |
| | the SWIMA-PV is requesting an inventory and the |
| | SWIMA-PC MUST respond using a Software Inventory, |
| | a Software Identifier Inventory, or a PA-TNC |
| | Error attribute. |
| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Identifier | in bytes of the Software Identifier field. |
| Length | |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Identifier value |
| Identifier | from a software inventory evidence record. This |
| | field value MUST be normalized to Network Unicode |
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| | format, as described in Section 5.5. This string |
| | MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
+---------------+---------------------------------------------------+
Table 2: SWIMA Request Attribute Fields
The SWIMA-PV sends the SWIMA Request attribute to a SWIMA-PC to
request the indicated information. Note that between the Result Type
flag and the Earliest EID field, the SWIMA-PC is constrained to a
single possible SWIMA Response attribute type (or a PA-TNC Error
attribute) in its response to the request.
The Subscribe and Clear Subscription flags are used to manage
subscriptions for the requesting SWIMA-PV on the receiving SWIMA-PC.
Specifically, an attribute with the Subscribe flag set seeks to
establish a new subscription by the requesting SWIMA-PV to the given
SWIMA-PC, while an attribute with the Clear Subscription flag seeks
to delete all existing subscriptions by the requesting SWIMA-PV on
the given SWIMA-PC. Note that, in the latter case, only the
subscriptions associated with the Connection ID and the Posture
Validator ID of the requester are deleted as described in
Section 3.8.3. A newly established subscription has the parameters
outlined in the Request attribute. Specifically, the Result Type
flag indicates the type of result to send in fulfillment of the
subscription, the value of the Earliest EID field indicates whether
the fulfillment attributes list inventories or events, and the fields
describing Software Identifiers (if present) indicate if and how a
subscription is targeted. In the case that the SWIMA-PC is unable or
unwilling to comply with the SWIMA-PV's request to establish or clear
subscriptions, the SWIMA-PC MUST respond with a PA-TNC Error
attribute with the SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR error code. If
the SWIMA-PV requests that subscriptions be cleared but has no
existing subscriptions, this is not an error.
An attribute requesting the establishment of a subscription is
effectively doing double-duty, as it is a request for an immediate
response from the SWIMA-PC in addition to setting up the
subscription. Assuming the SWIMA-PC is willing to comply with the
subscription it MUST send an appropriate response attribute to a
request with the Subscribe flag set containing all requested
information. The same is true of the Clear Subscription flag -
assuming there is no error the SWIMA-PC MUST generate a response
attribute without regard to the presence of this flag in addition to
clearing its subscription list.
Both the Subscribe and Clear Subscription flags MAY be set in a
single SWIMA Request attribute. In the case where this request is
successful, the end result MUST be equivalent to the SWIMA-PC
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clearing its subscription list for the given SWIMA-PV first and then
creating a new subscription in accordance with the request
parameters. In other words, do not first create the new subscription
and then clear all the subscriptions including the one that was just
created. In the case that the requested actions are successfully
completed, the SWIMA-PC MUST respond with a SWIMA Response attribute.
The specific type of SWIMA Response attribute depends on the Result
Type and Earliest EID fields, as described above. In the case where
there is a failure that prevents some part this request from
completing, the SWIMA-PC MUST NOT add a new subscription, MUST NOT
clear the old subscriptions, and the SWIMA-PC MUST respond with a PA-
TNC Error attribute. In other words, the SWIMA-PC MUST NOT partially
succeed at implementing such a request; either all actions succeed,
or none succeed.
The Earliest EID field is used to indicate if the SWIMA-PV is
requesting an inventory or event list from the SWIMA-PC. A value of
0 (0x00000000) represents a request for inventory information.
Otherwise, the SWIMA-PV is requesting event information. For
Earliest EID values other than 0, the SWIMA-PC's response MUST
respond with event records, as described in Section 3.7. Note that
the request does not identify a particular EID Epoch, since responses
can only include events in the SWIMA-PC's current EID Epoch.
The Software Identifier Count indicates the number of Software
Identifiers in the attribute. This number might be any value between
0 and 16,777,216, inclusive. A single Software Identifier is
represented by the following fields: Software Identifier Length and
Software Identifier. These fields are repeated a number of times
equal to the Software Identifier Count, which may be 0. The Software
Identifier Length field indicates the number of bytes allocated to
the Software Identifier field. The Software Identifier field
contains a Software Identifier as describe in Section 3.4.1. The
presence of one or more Software Identifiers is used by the SWIMA-PV
to indicate a targeted request, which seeks only inventories of or
events affecting software corresponding to the given identifiers.
The SWIMA-PC MUST only report software that matched the Software
Identifiers provided in the SWIMA-PVs SWIMA Request attribute.
5.8. Software Identifier Inventory
A SWIMA-PC sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PV to convey the inventory
of the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection without the
inclusion of software inventory evidence records. This list might
represent a complete inventory or a targeted list of records,
depending on the parameters in the SWIMA-PV's request. A SWIMA-PV
MUST NOT send this attribute. The SWIMA-PC either sends this
attribute in fulfillment of an existing subscription where the
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establishing request has a Result Type of 1 and the Earliest EID is
zero, or in direct response to a SWIMA Request attribute where the
Result Type is 1 and the Earliest EID is zero.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Flags | Software Identifier Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Request ID Copy / Subscription ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| EID Epoch |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Software Identifier Count" times) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 8: Software Identifier Inventory Attribute
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Data Model Type PEN |Data Model Type|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Id Num | Software Identifier Length |Software Id (v)|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Locator Length |Software Locator (variable len)|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 9: Software Identifier Inventory Attribute SUB-BLOCK
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Flags: Bit 0 - | In the case that this attribute is sent in |
| Subscription | fulfillment of a subscription this bit MUST be |
| Fulfillment | set (1). In the case that this attribute is a |
| | direct response to a SWIMA Request, this bit |
| | MUST be unset (0). |
| | |
| Flags: Bit 1-7 | Reserved for future use. This field MUST be set |
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| - Reserved | to zero on transmission and ignored upon |
| | reception. |
| | |
| Software | The number of Software Identifiers that follow. |
| Identifier | This field is an unsigned integer. The Record |
| Count | Identifier, Data Model Type PEN, Data Model |
| | Type, Source Identification Number, Software |
| | Identifier Length, Software Identifier, Software |
| | Locator Length, and Software Locator fields are |
| | repeated, in order, the number of times |
| | indicated in this field. This field value MAY be |
| | 0, in which case there are no instances of these |
| | fields. |
| | |
| Request ID | In the case where this attribute is in direct |
| Copy / | response to a SWIMA Request attribute from a |
| Subscription | SWIMA-PV, this field MUST contain an exact copy |
| ID | of the Request ID field from that SWIMA Request. |
| | In the case where this attribute is sent in |
| | fulfillment of an active subscription, this |
| | field MUST contain the Subscription ID of the |
| | subscription being fulfilled by this attribute. |
| | |
| EID Epoch | The EID Epoch of the Last EID value. This field |
| | is an unsigned 4-byte unsigned integer. |
| | |
| Last EID | The EID of the last event recorded by the SWIMA- |
| | PC, or 0 if the SWIMA-PC has no recorded events. |
| | This field is an unsigned 4-byte unsigned |
| | integer. |
| | |
| Record | A 4-byte unsigned integer containing the Record |
| Identifier | Identifier value from a software inventory |
| | evidence record. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 3-byte unsigned integer containing the Private |
| Type PEN | Enterprise Number (PEN) of the organization that |
| | assigned the meaning of the Data Model Type |
| | value. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 1-byte unsigned integer containing an |
| Type | identifier number that identifies the data model |
| | of the reported record. |
| | |
| Source | The Source Identification Number associated with |
| Identification | the source from which this software installation |
| Number | inventory instance was reported. |
| | |
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| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Identifier | in bytes of the SW ID field. |
| Length | |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Identifier |
| Identifier | value from a software inventory evidence record. |
| | This field value MUST be normalized to Network |
| | Unicode format as described in Section 5.5. This |
| | string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Locator Length | in bytes of the Software Locator field. |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Locator value. |
| Locator | This field value MUST first be normalized to |
| | Network Unicode format, as described in Section |
| | 5.5, and then encoded as a URI [RFC3986]. This |
| | string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
Table 3: Software Identifier Inventory Attribute Fields
In the case that this attribute is sent in fulfillment of a
subscription, the Subscription Fulfillment bit MUST be set (1). In
the case that this attribute is sent in direct response to a SWIMA
Request, the Subscription Fulfillment bit MUST be unset (0). Note
that the SWIMA Response attribute sent in direct response to a SWIMA
Request that establishes a subscription (i.e., a subscription's
establishing request) MUST be treated as a direct response to that
SWIMA Request (and thus the Subscription Fulfillment bit is unset).
SWIMA Response attributes are only treated as being in fulfillment of
a subscription (i.e., Subscription Fulfillment bit set) if they are
sent following a change event, as shown in Figure 3.
The Software Identifier Count field indicates the number of Software
Identifiers present in this inventory. Each Software Identifier is
represented by the following set of fields: Record Identifier, Data
Model Type, Software Identifier Length, Software Identifier, Software
Locator Length, and Software Locator. These fields will appear once
for each reported record.
When responding directly to a SWIMA Request attribute, the Request ID
Copy / Subscription ID field MUST contain an exact copy of the
Request ID field from that SWIMA Request. When this attribute is
sent in fulfillment of an existing subscription on this Posture
Collector, then this field MUST contain the Subscription ID of the
fulfilled subscription.
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The EID Epoch field indicates the EID Epoch of the Last EID value.
The Last EID field MUST contain the EID of the last recorded change
event (see Section 3.7 for more about EIDs and recorded events) at
the time this inventory was collected. In the case where there are
no recorded change events at the time that this inventory was
collected, the Last EID field MUST contain 0. These fields can be
interpreted to indicate that the provided inventory reflects the
state of the endpoint after all changes up to and including this last
event have been accounted for.
The Data Model Type PEN and Data Model Type fields are used to
identify the data model associated with the given software record.
These fields are discussed more in Section 3.4.2.
The Source Identification Number field is used to identify the source
that provided the given record, as described in Section 3.1.
5.9. Software Identifier Events
A SWIMA-PC sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PV to convey events where
the affected records are reported without software inventory evidence
records. A SWIMA-PV MUST NOT send this attribute. The SWIMA-PC
either sends this attribute in fulfillment of an existing
subscription where the establishing request has a Result Type is 1
and the Earliest EID is non-zero, or in direct response to a SWIMA
Request attribute where the Result Type is 1 and the Earliest EID is
non-zero.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Flags | Event Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Request ID Copy / Subscription ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| EID Epoch |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last Consulted EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Event Count" times) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 10: Software Identifier Events Attribute
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1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+- -+
| |
+- -+
| Timestamp |
+- -+
| |
+- -+
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Data Model Type PEN |Data Model Type|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Id Num | Action | Software Identifier Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Identifier (variable length) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Locator Length |Software Locator (variable len)|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 11: Software Identifier Events Attribute SUB-BLOCK
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Flags: Bit 0 - | In the case that this attribute is sent in |
| Subscription | fulfillment of a subscription this bit MUST be |
| Fulfillment | set (1). In the case that this attribute is a |
| | direct response to a SWIMA Request, this bit |
| | MUST be unset (0). |
| | |
| Flags: Bit 1-7 | Reserved for future use. This field MUST be set |
| - Reserved | to zero on transmission and ignored upon |
| | reception. |
| | |
| Event Count | The number of events that are reported in this |
| | attribute. This field is a 3-byte unsigned |
| | integer. The EID, Timestamp, Record Identifier, |
| | Data Model Type PEN, Data Model Type, Source |
| | Identification Number, Action, Software |
| | Identifier Length, Software Identifier, Software |
| | Locator Length, and Software Locator fields are |
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| | repeated, in order, the number of times |
| | indicated in this field. This field value MAY be |
| | 0, in which case there are no instances of these |
| | fields. |
| | |
| Request ID | In the case where this attribute is in direct |
| Copy / | response to a SWIMA Request attribute from a |
| Subscription | SWIMA-PV, this field MUST contain an exact copy |
| ID | of the Request ID field from that SWIMA Request. |
| | In the case where this attribute is sent in |
| | fulfillment of an active subscription, this |
| | field MUST contain the Subscription ID of the |
| | subscription being fulfilled by this attribute. |
| | |
| EID Epoch | The EID Epoch of the Last EID value. This field |
| | is an unsigned 4-byte unsigned integer. |
| | |
| Last EID | The EID of the last event recorded by the SWIMA- |
| | PC, or 0 if the SWIMA-PC has no recorded events. |
| | This field contains the EID of the SWIMA-PC's |
| | last recorded change event (which might or might |
| | not be included as an event record in this |
| | attribute). |
| | |
| Last Consulted | The EID of the last event record that was |
| EID | consulted when generating the event record list |
| | included in this attribute. This is different |
| | from the Last EID field value if and only if |
| | this attribute is conveying a partial list of |
| | event records. See Section 3.7.5 for more on |
| | partial list of event records. |
| | |
| EID | The EID of the event in this event record. |
| | |
| Timestamp | The timestamp associated with the event in this |
| | event record. This timestamp is the SWIMA-PC's |
| | best understanding of when the given event |
| | occurred. Note that this timestamp might be an |
| | estimate. The Timestamp date and time MUST be |
| | represented as an RFC 3339 [RFC3339] compliant |
| | ASCII string in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) |
| | time with the additional restrictions that the |
| | 'T' delimiter and the 'Z' suffix MUST be |
| | capitalized and fractional seconds (time- |
| | secfrac) MUST NOT be included. This field |
| | conforms to the date-time ABNF production from |
| | section 5.6 of RFC 3339 with the above |
| | restrictions. Leap seconds are permitted and |
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| | SWIMA-PVs MUST support them. The Timestamp |
| | string MUST NOT be NULL terminated or padded in |
| | any way. The length of this field is always 20 |
| | octets. |
| | |
| Record | A 4-byte unsigned integer containing the Record |
| Identifier | Identifier value from a software inventory |
| | evidence record. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 3-byte unsigned integer containing the Private |
| Type PEN | Enterprise Number (PEN) of the organization that |
| | assigned the meaning of the Data Model Type |
| | value. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 1-byte unsigned integer containing an |
| Type | identifier number that identifies the data model |
| | of the reported record. |
| | |
| Source | The Source Identification Number associated with |
| Identification | the source from which this software installation |
| Number | inventory instance was reported. |
| | |
| Action | The type of event that is recorded in this event |
| | record. Possible values are: 1 = CREATION - the |
| | addition of a record to the endpoint's Software |
| | Inventory Evidence Collection; 2 = DELETION - |
| | the removal of a record from the endpoint's |
| | Software Inventory Evidence Collection; 3 = |
| | ALTERATION - There was an alteration to a record |
| | within the endpoint's Software Inventory |
| | Evidence Collection. All other values are |
| | reserved for future use and MUST NOT be used |
| | when sending attributes. In the case where a |
| | SWIMA-PV receives an event record that uses an |
| | action value other than the ones defined here, |
| | it MUST ignore that event record but SHOULD |
| | process other event records in this attribute as |
| | normal. |
| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Identifier | in bytes of the SW ID field. |
| Length | |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Identifier |
| Identifier | value from a software inventory evidence record. |
| | This field value MUST first be normalized to |
| | Network Unicode format as described in Section |
| | 5.5. This string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
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| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Locator Length | in bytes of the Software Locator field. |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Locator value. |
| Locator | This field value MUST first be normalized to |
| | Network Unicode format, as described in Section |
| | 5.5, and then encoded as a URI [RFC3986]. This |
| | string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
Table 4: Software Identifier Events Attribute Fields
The first few fields in the Software Identifier Events attribute
mirror those in the Software Identifier Inventory attribute. The
primary difference is that, instead of conveying an inventory, the
attribute conveys zero or more event records, consisting of the EID,
timestamp, Record Identifier, action type, data model type, Software
Identifier, and Software Locator of the affected software inventory
evidence record.
With regard to the Timestamp field, it is important to note that
clock skew between the SWIMA-PC and SWIMA-PV as well as between
different SWIMA-PCs within an enterprise might make correlation of
timestamp values difficult. This specification does not attempt to
resolve clock skew issues, although other mechanisms outside of this
specification do exist to reduce the impact of clock skew and make
the timestamp more useful for such correlation. Instead, SWIMA uses
the Timestamp value primarily as a means to indicate the amount of
time between two events on a single endpoint. For example, by taking
the difference of the times for when a record was removed and then
subsequently re-added, one can get an indication as to how long the
system was without the given record (and, thus without the associated
software). Since this will involve comparison of timestamp values
all originating on the same system, clock skew between the SWIMA-PC
and SWIMA-PV is not an issue. However, if the SWIMA-PC's clock was
adjusted between two recorded events, it is possible for such a
calculation to lead to incorrect understandings of the temporal
distance between events. Users of this field need to be aware of the
possibility for such occurrences. In the case where the Timestamp
values of two events appear to contradict the EID ordering of those
events (i.e., the later EID has an earlier timestamp) the recipient
MUST treat the EID ordering as correct.
All events recorded in a Software Identifier Events Attribute are
required to be part of the same EID Epoch. Specifically, all
reported events MUST have an EID from the same EID Epoch as each
other, and which is the same as the EID Epoch of the Last EID and
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Last Consulted EID values. The SWIMA-PC MUST NOT report events with
EIDs from different EID Epochs.
The Last Consulted EID field contains the EID of the last event
record considered for inclusion in this attribute. If this attribute
contains a partial event set (as described in Section 3.7.5) this
field value will be less than the Last EID value; if this attribute
contains a complete event set, the Last EID and Last Consulted EID
values are identical.
If multiple events are sent in a Software Identifier Events
attribute, the order in which they appear within the attribute is not
significant. The EIDs associated with them are used for ordering the
indicated events appropriately. Also note that a single software
record might be reported multiple times in an attribute, such as if
multiple events involving the associated record were being reported.
5.10. Software Inventory
A SWIMA-PC sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PV to convey a list of
inventory records. A SWIMA-PV MUST NOT send this attribute. The
SWIMA-PC either sends this attribute in fulfillment of an existing
subscription where the establishing request had a Result Type of 0
and the Earliest EID is zero, or in direct response to a SWIMA
Request attribute where the Result Type is 0 and the Earliest EID is
zero.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Flags | Record Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Request ID Copy / Subscription ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| EID Epoch |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Record Count" times) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 12: Software Inventory Attribute
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1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Data Model Type PEN |Data Model Type|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Id Num | Software Identifier Length |Software Id (v)|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Locator Length |Software Locator (variable len)|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record (variable length) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 13: SWIMA Inventory Attribute SUB-BLOCK
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Flags: Bit 0 - | In the case that this attribute is sent in |
| Subscription | fulfillment of a subscription this bit MUST be |
| Fulfillment | set (1). In the case that this attribute is a |
| | direct response to a SWIMA Request, this bit |
| | MUST be unset (0). |
| | |
| Flags: Bit 1-7 | Reserved for future use. This field MUST be set |
| - Reserved | to zero on transmission and ignored upon |
| | reception. |
| | |
| Record Count | The number of records that follow. This field is |
| | a 3-byte unsigned integer. The Record |
| | Identifier, Data Model Type PEN, Data Model |
| | Type, Source Identification Number, Software |
| | Identifier Length, Software Identifier, Software |
| | Locator Length, Software Locator, Record Length, |
| | and Record fields are repeated, in order, the |
| | number of times indicated in this field. This |
| | field value MAY be 0 in which case there are no |
| | instances of these fields. |
| | |
| Request ID | In the case where this attribute is in direct |
| Copy / | response to a SWIMA Request attribute from a |
| Subscription | SWIMA-PV, this field MUST contain an exact copy |
| ID | of the Request ID field from that SWIMA Request. |
| | In the case where this attribute is sent in |
| | fulfillment of an active subscription, this |
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| | field MUST contain the Subscription ID of the |
| | subscription being fulfilled by this attribute. |
| | |
| EID Epoch | The EID Epoch of the Last EID value. This field |
| | is an unsigned 4-byte unsigned integer. |
| | |
| Last EID | The EID of the last event recorded by the SWIMA- |
| | PC, or 0 if the SWIMA-PC has no recorded events. |
| | This field is an unsigned 4-byte unsigned |
| | integer. |
| | |
| Record | A 4-byte unsigned integer containing the Record |
| Identifier | Identifier value from a software inventory |
| | evidence record. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 3-byte unsigned integer containing the Private |
| Type PEN | Enterprise Number (PEN) of the organization that |
| | assigned the meaning of the Data Model Type |
| | value. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 1-byte unsigned integer containing an |
| Type | identifier number that identifies the data model |
| | of the reported record. |
| | |
| Source | The Source Identification Number associated with |
| Identification | the source from which this software installation |
| Number | inventory instance was reported. |
| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Identifier | in bytes of the SW ID field. |
| Length | |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Identifier |
| Identifier | value from a software inventory evidence record. |
| | This field value MUST first be normalized to |
| | Network Unicode format as described in Section |
| | 5.5. This string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Locator Length | in bytes of the Software Locator field. |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Locator value. |
| Locator | This field value MUST first be normalized to |
| | Network Unicode format, as described in Section |
| | 5.5, and then encoded as a URI [RFC3986]. This |
| | string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
| | |
| Record Length | This is a 4-byte unsigned integer indicating the |
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| | length of the Record field in bytes. |
| | |
| Record | A software inventory evidence record as a |
| | string. The record MUST be converted and |
| | normalized to Network Unicode format as |
| | described in Section 5.5. This string MUST NOT |
| | be NULL terminated. |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
Table 5: Software Inventory Attribute Fields
The Software Inventory attribute contains some number of software
inventory evidence records along with the core response attribute
fields. Given that the size of records can vary considerably, the
length of this attribute is highly variable and, if transmitting a
complete inventory, can be extremely large. Enterprises might wish
to constrain the use of Software Inventory attributes to targeted
requests to avoid over-burdening the network unnecessarily.
When copying a software inventory evidence record into the Record
field, the record MUST be converted and normalized to use Network
Unicode format prior to its inclusion in the record field.
5.11. Software Events
A SWIMA-PC sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PV to convey a list of
events that include software inventory evidence records. A SWIMA-PV
MUST NOT send this attribute. The SWIMA-PC either sends this
attribute in fulfillment of an existing subscription where the
establishing request has a Result Type of 0 and the Earliest EID is
non-zero, or in direct response to a SWIMA Request attribute where
the Result Type is 0 and the Earliest EID is non-zero.
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1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Flags | Event Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Request ID Copy / Subscription ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| EID Epoch |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Last Consulted EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Event Count" times) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 14: Software Events Attribute
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1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
+- -+
| |
+- -+
| Timestamp |
+- -+
| |
+- -+
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record Identifier |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Data Model Type PEN |Data Model Type|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source Id Num | Action | Software Identifier Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Identifier (variable length) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Locator Length |Software Locator (variable len)|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record Length |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Record (variable Length) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 15: SWIMA Events Attribute SUB-BLOCK
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Flags: Bit 0 - | In the case that this attribute is sent in |
| Subscription | fulfillment of a subscription this bit MUST be |
| Fulfillment | set (1). In the case that this attribute is a |
| | direct response to a SWIMA Request, this bit |
| | MUST be unset (0). |
| | |
| Flags: Bit 1-7 | Reserved for future use. This field MUST be set |
| - Reserved | to zero on transmission and ignored upon |
| | reception. |
| | |
| Event Count | The number of events being reported in this |
| | attribute. This field is a 3-byte unsigned |
| | integer. The EID, Timestamp, Record Identifier, |
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| | Data Model Type PEN, Data Model Type, Source |
| | Identification Number, Action, Software |
| | Identifier Length, Software Identifier, Software |
| | Locator Length, Software Locator, Record Length, |
| | and Record fields are repeated, in order, the |
| | number of times indicated in this field. This |
| | field value MAY be 0, in which case there are no |
| | instances of these fields. |
| | |
| Request ID | In the case where this attribute is in direct |
| Copy / | response to a SWIMA Request attribute from a |
| Subscription | SWIMA-PV, this field MUST contain an exact copy |
| ID | of the Request ID field from that SWIMA Request. |
| | In the case where this attribute is sent in |
| | fulfillment of an active subscription, this |
| | field MUST contain the Subscription ID of the |
| | subscription being fulfilled by this attribute. |
| | |
| EID Epoch | The EID Epoch of the Last EID value. This field |
| | is an unsigned 4-byte unsigned integer. |
| | |
| Last EID | The EID of the last event recorded by the SWIMA- |
| | PC, or 0 if the SWIMA-PC has no recorded events. |
| | This field contains the EID of the SWIMA-PC's |
| | last recorded change event (which might or might |
| | not be included as an event record in this |
| | attribute). |
| | |
| Last Consulted | The EID of the last event record that was |
| EID | consulted when generating the event record list |
| | included in this attribute. This is different |
| | from the Last EID field value if and only if |
| | this attribute is conveying a partial list of |
| | event records. See Section 3.7.5 for more on |
| | partial list of event records. |
| | |
| EID | The EID of the event in this event record. |
| | |
| Timestamp | The timestamp associated with the event in this |
| | event record. This timestamp is the SWIMA-PC's |
| | best understanding of when the given event |
| | occurred. Note that this timestamp might be an |
| | estimate. The Timestamp date and time MUST be |
| | represented as an RFC 3339 [RFC3339] compliant |
| | ASCII string in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) |
| | time with the additional restrictions that the |
| | 'T' delimiter and the 'Z' suffix MUST be |
| | capitalized and fractional seconds (time- |
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| | secfrac) MUST NOT be included. This field |
| | conforms to the date-time ABNF production from |
| | section 5.6 of RFC 3339 with the above |
| | restrictions. Leap seconds are permitted and |
| | SWIMA-PVs MUST support them. The Timestamp |
| | string MUST NOT be NULL terminated or padded in |
| | any way. The length of this field is always 20 |
| | octets. |
| | |
| Record | A 4-byte unsigned integer containing the Record |
| Identifier | Identifier value from a software inventory |
| | evidence record. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 3-byte unsigned integer containing the Private |
| Type PEN | Enterprise Number (PEN) of the organization that |
| | assigned the meaning of the Data Model Type |
| | value. |
| | |
| Data Model | A 1-byte unsigned integer containing an |
| Type | identifier number that identifies the data model |
| | of the reported record. |
| | |
| Source | The Source Identification Number associated with |
| Identification | the source from which this software installation |
| Number | inventory instance was reported. |
| | |
| Action | The type of event that is recorded in this event |
| | record. Possible values are: 1 = CREATION - the |
| | addition of a record to the endpoint's Software |
| | Inventory Evidence Collection; 2 = DELETION - |
| | the removal of a record from the endpoint's |
| | Software Inventory Evidence Collection; 3 = |
| | ALTERATION - There was an alteration to a record |
| | within the endpoint's Software Inventory |
| | Evidence Collection. All other values are |
| | reserved for future use and MUST NOT be used |
| | when sending attributes. In the case where a |
| | SWIMA-PV receives an event record that uses an |
| | action value other than the ones defined here, |
| | it MUST ignore that event record but SHOULD |
| | process other event records in this attribute as |
| | normal. |
| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Identifier | in bytes of the Software Identifier field. |
| Length | |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Identifier |
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| Identifier | value from a software inventory evidence record. |
| | This field value MUST first be normalized to |
| | Network Unicode format as described in Section |
| | 5.5. This string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
| | |
| Software | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length |
| Locator Length | in bytes of the Software Locator field. |
| | |
| Software | A string containing the Software Locator value. |
| Locator | This field value MUST first be normalized to |
| | Network Unicode format, as described in Section |
| | 5.5, and then encoded as a URI [RFC3986]. This |
| | string MUST NOT be NULL terminated. |
| | |
| Record Length | This is a 4-byte unsigned integer indicating the |
| | length of the Record field in bytes. |
| | |
| Record | A software inventory evidence record as a |
| | string. The record MUST be converted and |
| | normalized to Network Unicode format as |
| | described in Section 5.5. This string MUST NOT |
| | be NULL terminated. |
+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
Table 6: Software Events Attribute Fields
The fields of this attribute are used in the same way as the
corresponding fields of the previous attributes. As with the
Software Inventory attribute, a Software Events attribute can be
quite large if many events have occurred following the event
indicated by a request's Earliest EID. As such, it is recommended
that the SWIMA Request attributes only request full records be sent
(Result Type set to 0) in a targeted request, thus constraining the
response just to records that match a given set of Software
Identifiers.
As with the Software Identifier Events Attribute, this attribute MUST
only contain event records with EIDs coming from the current EID
Epoch of the SWIMA-PC.
As with the Software Inventory Attribute, the SWIMA-PC MUST perform
conversion and normalization of the record.
5.12. Subscription Status Request
A SWIMA-PV sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PC to request a list of
active subscriptions for which the requesting SWIMA-PV is the
subscriber. A SWIMA-PC MUST NOT send this attribute.
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This attribute has no fields.
A SWIMA-PC MUST respond to this attribute by sending a Subscription
Status Response attribute (or a PA-TNC Error attribute if it is
unable to correctly provide a response).
5.13. Subscription Status Response
A SWIMA-PC sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PV to report the list of
active subscriptions for which the receiving SWIMA-PV is the
subscriber. A SWIMA-PV MUST NOT send this attribute.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Status Flags | Subscription Record Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Subscription Record Count" times) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 16: Subscription Status Response Attribute
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Flags | Software Identifier Count |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Request ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Earliest EID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
| SUB-SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Software Identifier Count" times) |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 17: SWIMA Status Response Attribute SUB-BLOCK
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1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Software Identifier Length | Software Identifier (var len) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 18: SWIMA Status Response Attribute SUB-SUB-BLOCK
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Status | Reserved for future use. This field MUST be set to |
| Flags: Bit | zero on transmission and ignored upon reception. |
| 0-7 - | |
| Reserved | |
| | |
| Subscription | The number of subscription records that follow. |
| Record Count | This field is a 3-byte unsigned integer. The |
| | Flags, Software Identifier Count, Request ID, and |
| | Earliest EID fields, and 0 or more instances of |
| | Software Identifier Length and Software |
| | Identifier, are repeated, in order, the number of |
| | times indicated in this field. (The Software |
| | Identifier Length and Software Identifier fields |
| | within each of these sets of fields are repeated a |
| | number of times equal to the preceding Software |
| | Identifier Count value.) The Subscription Record |
| | Count field value MAY be 0 in which case there are |
| | no instances of these fields. |
| | |
| Flags, | For each active subscription, these fields contain |
| Software | an exact copy of the fields with the same name as |
| Identifier | provided in the subscription's establishing |
| Count, | request. |
| Request ID, | |
| Earliest | |
| EID, | |
| Software | |
| Identifier | |
| Length, and | |
| Software | |
| Identifier | |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
Table 7: Subscription Status Response Fields
A Subscription Status Response contains zero or more subscription
records. Specifically, it MUST contain one subscription record for
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each active subscription associated with the party that sent the
Subscription Status Request to which this attribute is a response.
As described in Section 3.8.2, the SWIMA-PC MUST use the requester's
Connection ID and its Posture Validator ID to determine which
subscriptions are associated with the requester.
A SWIMA-PC MUST send a Subscription Status Response attribute in
response to a Subscription Status Request attribute. The only
exception to this is if the SWIMA-PC experiences an error condition
that prevents it from correctly populating the Subscription Status
Response attribute, in which case it MUST respond with a PA-TNC Error
attribute appropriate to the type of error experienced. If there are
no active subscriptions associated with the requesting party, the
Subscription Status Response attribute will consist of its Status
Flags field, a Subscription Record Count field with a value of 0, and
no additional fields.
Each subscription record included in a Subscription Status Response
attribute duplicates the fields of a SWIMA Request attribute that was
the establishing request of a subscription. Note that the Request ID
field in the record captures the Subscription ID associated with the
given subscription record (since the Subscription ID is the same as
the Request ID of the establishing request). Note also that if the
establishing request is targeted, then its Record Count field will be
non-zero and, within that subscription record, the Software
Identifier Length and Software Identifier fields are repeated, in
order, the number of times indicated in the Record Count field. As
such, each subscription record can be different sizes. If the
establishing request is not targeted (Record Count field is 0), the
subscription record has no Software Identifier Length or Software
Identifier fields.
When a SWIMA-PV compares the information received in a Subscription
Status Response to its own records of active subscriptions it should
be aware that the SWIMA-PC might be unable to distinguish this SWIMA-
PV from other SWIMA-PVs on the same NEA Server. As a result, it is
possible that the SWIMA-PC will report more subscription records than
the SWIMA-PV recognizes. For this reason, SWIMA-PVs SHOULD NOT
automatically assume that extra subscriptions reported in a
Subscription Status Response indicate a problem.
5.14. Source Metadata Request
A SWIMA-PV sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PC to request metadata
about sources that the SWIMA-PC is using to collect software
inventory information. A SWIMA-PC MUST NOT send this attribute.
This attribute has no fields.
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A SWIMA-PC MUST respond to this attribute by sending a Sources
Metadata Response attribute (or a PA-TNC Error attribute if it is
unable to correctly provide a response).
5.15. Source Metadata Response
A SWIMA-PC sends this attribute to a SWIMA-PV to provide descriptive
metadata about the sources of software inventory information used by
the SWIMA-PC. A SWIMA-PV MUST NOT send this attribute.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Reserved | Source Count | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |
| |
| SUB-BLOCK (Repeated "Source Count" times |
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Source Metadata Response Attribute
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Source ID | Metadata Length | Metadata (var)|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Source Metadata Response Attribute SUB-BLOCK
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+----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Reserved | Reserved for future use. This field MUST be set to |
| | zero on transmission and ignored upon reception. |
| | |
| Source | The number of source records that follow. The Source |
| Count | ID, Metadata Size, and Metadata fields are repeated, |
| | in order, the number of times indicated by this field. |
| | This field MAY be 0, in which case no fields follow |
| | (but this would only be done to indicate that the |
| | SWIMA-PC has no active sources, which would not be a |
| | usual situation). |
| | |
| Source | The Source ID number associated with the described |
| ID | source for any communications with the recipient |
| | SWIMA-PV. |
| | |
| Metadata | A 2-byte unsigned integer indicating the length in |
| Length | bytes of the Metadata field. |
| | |
| Metadata | A string containing descriptive metadata about the |
| | indicated data source. This string MUST NOT be NULL |
| | terminated. |
+----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
Source Metadata Response Fields
A Source Metadata Response attribute contains 0 or more records, each
describing one of the data sources the SWIMA-PC uses to collect
software inventory information. It SHOULD contain one metadata
record for each source that the SWIMA-PC uses. (There might be
reasons not to inform certain SWIMA-PVs of the presence of certain
data sources.) The attribute MUST contain a metadata record for each
source that has been identified in inventory or event messages to the
given SWIMA-PV.
A SWIMA-PC MUST send a Source Metadata Response attribute in response
to a Source Metadata Request attribute. The only exception to this
is if the SWIMA-PC experiences an error condition that prevents it
from correctly populating the Source Metadata Response attribute, in
which case it MUST respond with a PA-TNC Error attribute appropriate
to the type of error experienced.
The Source Count field indicates how many source metadata records are
included in the attribute. Each included record consists of a Source
Identifier, Metadata Length, and Metadata field.
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The Source Identifier corresponds to the Source Identifier field in
inventory and event messages. In the case where the Source
Identifier value in a Source Metadata Response attribute matches a
Source Identifier associated with an event or inventory record and
both the Source Metadata Response and the inventory/event record were
sent to the same SWIMA-PV, the source described in the Metadata field
MUST be the same source that provided the event or inventory record
associated with the Source Identifier. Recall that a SWIMA-PC MAY
use different Source Identifier associations with different SWIMA-
PVs. As such, the association between a Source Identifier and the
conveyed metadata is also only meaningful for communications between
the sending SWIMA-PC and receiving SWIMA-PV. When sending to a given
SWIMA-PV, the SWIMA-PC MUST use the recipient SWIMA-PVs Source
Identifier associations.
The Metadata Length indicates the length, in bytes, if the Metadata
field. The Metadata field contains information about the indicated
data source. This specification does not dictate a format for the
contents of the Metadata field. This field MAY include machine-
readable information. For broadest utility, the Metadata field
SHOULD include human-readable, descriptive information about the data
source.
5.16. PA-TNC Error as Used by SWIMA
The PA-TNC Error attribute is defined in the PA-TNC specification
[RFC5792], and its use here conforms to that specification. A PA-TNC
Error can be sent due to any error in the PA-TNC exchange and might
also be sent in response to error conditions specific to the SWIMA
exchange. The latter case utilizes error codes defined below.
A PA-TNC Error MUST be sent by a SWIMA-PC in response to a SWIMA
Request in the case where the SWIMA-PC encounters a fatal error
(i.e., an error that prevents further processing of an exchange)
relating to the attribute exchange. A SWIMA-PV MUST NOT send this
attribute. In the case where the SWIMA-PV experiences a fatal error,
it MUST handle the error without sending a PA-TNC Error attribute.
The SWIMA-PV MAY take other actions in response to the error, such as
logging the cause of the error, or even taking actions to isolate the
endpoint.
A PA-TNC Error attribute is sent instead of a SWIMA Response
attribute due to factors that prevent the reliable creation of a
SWIMA Response. As such, a SWIMA-PC MUST NOT send both a PA-TNC
Error attribute and a SWIMA Response attribute in response to a
single SWIMA Request attribute.
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Table 8 lists the Error Code values for the PA-TNC Error attribute
specific to the SWIMA exchange. Error codes are shown in both
hexadecimal and decimal format. In all of these cases, the Error
Code Vendor ID field MUST be set to 0x000000, corresponding to the
IETF SMI Private Enterprise Number. The Error Information structures
for each error type are described in the following subsections.
Note that a message with a SWIMA attribute might also result in an
error condition covered by the Standard PA-TNC Error Codes defined in
PA-TNC. For example, a SWIMA Attribute might have an invalid
parameter, leading to an error code of "Invalid Parameter". In this
case, the SWIMA-PC MUST use the appropriate PA-TNC Error Code value
as defined in Section 4.2.8 of PA-TNC specification.
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+------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| Error Code | Description |
| Value | |
+------------+------------------------------------------------------+
| 0x00000004 | SWIMA_ERROR. This indicates a fatal error (i.e., an |
| (4) | error that precludes the creation of a suitable |
| | response attribute) other than the errors described |
| | below but still specific to the processing of SWIMA |
| | Attributes. The Description field SHOULD contain |
| | additional diagnostic information. |
| | |
| 0x00000005 | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR. This indicates that |
| (5) | the SWIMA-PC denied the SWIMA-PV's request to |
| | establish a subscription. The Description field |
| | SHOULD contain additional diagnostic information. |
| | |
| 0x00000006 | SWIMA_RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE_ERROR. This indicates that |
| (6) | the SWIMA-PC's response to the SWIMA-PV's request |
| | was too large to be serviced. The error information |
| | structure indicates the largest possible size of a |
| | response supported by the SWIMA-PC (see Section |
| | 5.16.2). The Description field SHOULD contain |
| | additional diagnostic information. |
| | |
| 0x00000007 | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR. This indicates |
| (7) | that the SWIMA-PC experienced an error fulfilling a |
| | given subscription. The error information includes |
| | the Subscription ID of the relevant subscription, as |
| | well as a sub-error that describes the nature of the |
| | error the SWIMA-PC experienced. The SWIMA-PC and |
| | SWIMA-PV MUST treat the identified subscription as |
| | cancelled. |
| | |
| 0x00000008 | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_ID_REUSE_ERROR. This indicates |
| (8) | that the SWIMA-PC received a SWIMA Request from a |
| | given SWIMA-PV where the Request ID of that SWIMA |
| | Request is currently used as the Subscription ID of |
| | an active subscription with that SWIMA-PV. This |
| | error does not cancel the identified subscription. |
+------------+------------------------------------------------------+
Table 8: PA-TNC Error Codes for SWIMA
The following subsections describe the structures present in the
Error Information fields. Note that all error structures include a
variable-length field, but do not include any fields indicating the
length of those fields. Such a field is unnecessary because all
other fields in the PA-TNC Error attribute are fixed-length, and thus
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the length of the variable-length field can be found by subtracting
the size of these fixed-length fields from the PA-TNC Attribute
Length field in the PA-TNC Attribute Header.
5.16.1. SWIMA_ERROR, SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR and
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_ID_REUSE_ERROR Information
The SWIMA_ERROR error code indicates that the sender (the SWIMA-PC)
has encountered an error related to the processing of a SWIMA Request
attribute but which is not covered by more specific SWIMA error
codes. The SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR is used when the SWIMA-PV
requests to establish a subscription or clear all subscriptions from
the given SWIMA-PV, but the SWIMA-PC is unable or unwilling to comply
with this request. The SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_ID_REUSE_ERROR is used
when the SWIMA-PC receives a SWIMA Request whose Request ID
duplicates a Subscription ID of an active subscription with the
request's sender. All of these error codes use the following error
information structure.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Copy of Request ID / Subscription ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Description (variable length) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 19: SWIMA Error, Subscription Error, and Subscription ID Reuse
Information
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+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Copy of | In the case that this error condition is generated |
| Request ID / | in direct response to a SWIMA Request attribute, |
| Subscription | this field MUST contain an exact copy of the |
| ID | Request ID field in the SWIMA Request attribute |
| | that caused this error. In the case that the |
| | attribute in question is generated in fulfillment |
| | of an active subscription, this field MUST contain |
| | the Subscription ID of the subscription for which |
| | the attribute was generated. (This is only |
| | possible if the error code is SWIMA_ERROR as the |
| | other errors are not generated by subscription |
| | fulfillment.) Note that, in this case, the |
| | indicated error appears as a sub-error for a |
| | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR, as described |
| | in Section 5.16.3. |
| | |
| Description | A UTF-8 [RFC3629] string describing the condition |
| | that caused this error. This field MAY be |
| | 0-length. However, senders SHOULD include some |
| | description in all PA-TNC Error attributes of |
| | these types. This field MUST NOT be NULL |
| | terminated. |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
Table 9: SWIMA Error, Subscription Error, and Subscription ID Reuse
Information Fields
This error information structure is used with SWIMA_ERROR,
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR, and
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_ID_REUSE_ERROR status codes to identify the SWIMA
Request attribute that precipitated the error condition and to
describe the error. The Description field contains text describing
the error. The SWIMA-PC MAY encode machine-interpretable information
in this field, but SHOULD also include a human-readable description
of the error, since the receiving SWIMA-PV might not recognize the
SWIMA-PC's encoded information.
5.16.2. SWIMA_RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE_ERROR Information
The SWIMA_RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE_ERROR error code indicates that a
response generated by a SWIMA-PC in response to a SWIMA-PV's SWIMA
Request attribute was too large to send.
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1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Copy of Request ID / Subscription I |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Maximum Allowed Size |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Description (variable length) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 20: SWIMA Response Too Large Error Information
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Copy of | In the case that the attribute in question is |
| Request ID / | generated in direct response to a SWIMA Request, |
| Subscription | this field MUST contain an exact copy of the |
| ID | Request ID field in the SWIMA Request attribute |
| | that caused this error. In the case that the |
| | attribute in question is generated in fulfillment |
| | of an active subscription, this field MUST contain |
| | the Subscription ID of the subscription for which |
| | the attribute was generated. Note that, in the |
| | latter case, the SWIMA_RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE_ERROR |
| | appears as a sub-error for a |
| | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR, as described |
| | in Section 5.16.3. |
| | |
| Maximum | This field MUST contain an unsigned integer |
| Allowed Size | indicating the largest permissible size, in bytes, |
| | of SWIMA Attribute that the SWIMA-PC is currently |
| | willing to send in response to a SWIMA Request |
| | attribute. |
| | |
| Description | A UTF-8 [RFC3629] string describing the condition |
| | that caused this error. This field MAY be |
| | 0-length. However, senders SHOULD include some |
| | description in all PA-TNC Error attributes of |
| | these types. This field MUST NOT be NULL |
| | terminated. |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
Table 10: SWIMA Response Too Large Error Information Fields
This error structure is used with the SWIMA_RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE_ERROR
status code to identify the SWIMA Request attribute that precipitated
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the error condition and to describe the error. The Maximum Allowed
Size field indicates the largest attribute the SWIMA-PC is willing to
send in response to a SWIMA Request under the current circumstances.
Note that under other circumstances, the SWIMA-PC might be willing to
return larger or smaller responses than indicated (such as if the
endpoint connects to the NEA Server using a different network
protocol). The other fields in this error information structure have
the same meanings as corresponding fields in the SWIMA_ERROR and
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR information structure.
5.16.3. SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR Information
The SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR error code indicates that
the SWIMA-PC encountered an error while fulfilling a subscription.
The bytes after the first 4 octets duplicate a PA-TNC Error attribute
(as described in Section 4.2.8 of PA-TNC) that is used to identify
the nature of the encountered error.
1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Subscription ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Reserved | Sub Error Code Vendor ID |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Sub Error Code |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Sub Error Information (variable Length) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 21: SWIMA Subscription Fulfillment Error Information
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+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Description |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| Subscription | This field MUST contain the Subscription ID of the |
| ID | subscription whose fulfillment caused this error. |
| | |
| Reserved | This field MUST contain the value of the Reserved |
| | field of a PA-TNC Error attribute that describes |
| | the error condition encountered during |
| | subscription processing. |
| | |
| Sub Error | This field MUST contain the value of the Error |
| Code Vendor | Code Vendor ID field of a PA-TNC Error attribute |
| ID | that describes the error condition encountered |
| | during subscription processing. |
| | |
| Sub Error | This field MUST contain the value of the Error |
| Code | Code field of a PA-TNC Error attribute that |
| | describes the error condition encountered during |
| | subscription processing. |
| | |
| Sub Error | This field MUST contain the value of the Error |
| Information | Information field of a PA-TNC Error attribute that |
| | describes the error condition encountered during |
| | subscription processing. |
+--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
Table 11: SWIMA Subscription Fulfillment Error Information Fields
This error structure is used with the
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR status code. The first 4 octets
of this error structure contain the Subscription ID of the
subscription that was being fulfilled when the error occurred. The
remaining fields of this error structure duplicate the fields of a
PA-TNC Error attribute, referred to as the "sub-error". The error
code of the sub-error corresponds to the type of error that the
SWIMA-PC encountered while fulfilling the given subscription. The
sub-error MUST NOT have an error code of
SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERROR.
The SWIMA-PC sending a PA-TNC Error attribute with this error code,
and the SWIMA-PV receiving it, MUST treat the subscription identified
by the Subscription ID field as cancelled. All other subscriptions
are unaffected.
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6. Supported Data Models
SWIMA supports an extensible list of data models for representing and
transmitting software inventory information. This list of data
models appears in the Software Data Model IANA registry (see
Section 10.4). This document provides guidance for an initial set of
data models. Other documents might provide guidance on the use of
new data models by SWIMA, and will be referenced by extensions to the
Software Data Model IANA registry.
6.1. ISO 2015 SWID Tags using XML
The International Organization for Standardization and the
International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) published the
specification governing SWID tag construction and use in 2009 with a
revised version published in 2015. [SWID15] Since that time, a
growing number of vendors have integrated SWID tags into their
software products. Doing so significantly simplifies the task of
identifying these pieces of software: instead of relying on discovery
processes that look for clues as to software presence, such as the
presence of particular files or registry keys. A readily available
list of SWID tags provides simple and immediate evidence as to the
presence of the given piece of software.
SWIMA has no reliance on the presence or management of SWID tags on
an endpoint as described in the ISO specification. However, the data
model for describing software that is presented in the ISO
specification provides a robust and comprehensive way of describing
software and is adopted here as a means of representing and
transmitting software information. It should be emphasized, the use
of the ISO SWID tag data model makes no assumption as to whether the
source of the recorded information was, in fact, an ISO SWID tag
harvested from the endpoint or whether the information was created
using some other source and normalized to the SWID format.
6.1.1. Guidance on Normalizing Source Data to ISO 2015 SWID Tags using
XML
Any record associated with this Software Data Model Type MUST conform
to the ISO/IEC 19770-2-2015 [SWID15] specification.
If generating a new ISO 2015 SWID tag, the software generating the
tag MUST use a Tag Creator RegID that is associated with the
generating software, unless this is impossible, in which case it MUST
use the "http://invalid.unavailable" Tag Creator RegID value. (This
conforms to conventions for an unknown Tag Creator in the ISO 2015
SWID tag specification.) Do not use a RegID associated with any
other party. In particular, it is incorrect to use a Tag Creator
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RegID associated with the software being described by the tag, the
enterprise that is using the software, or any other entity except
that of the party that built the tool that is generating the SWID
tag. This reflects the requirement that the Tag Creator RegID
identify the party that created the tag. Moreover, any generated
tags SHOULD conform with guidance for tag creators provided NIST IR
8060 [NIST8060], which provides additional recommendations to
increase interoperable use of SWID tags.
6.1.2. Guidance on Creation of Software Identifiers from ISO 2015 SWID
Tags
A Software Identifier generated from an ISO 2015 SWID tag is
expressed as a concatenation of the value of the Tag Creator RegID
field and the Unique ID field. Specifically, it MUST be of the form:
TAG_CREATOR_REGID "_" "_" UNIQUE_ID. Specifically, the Software
Identifier consists of, the Tag Creator RegID and the Unique ID from
the tag connected with a double underscore (_), without any other
connecting character or whitespace.
6.2. ISO 2009 SWID Tags using XML
As noted above, ISO's SWID tag specification provides a useful data
model for representation of software information. As of the writing
of this specification, while the 2015 specification is considered
more comprehensive and addresses some issues with the 2009
specification, 2009-format SWID tags remain far more common in
deployments. For this reason, ISO 2009 SWID tags are included in the
Software Data Model IANA table.
6.2.1. Guidance on Normalizing Source Data to ISO 2009 SWID Tags using
XML
Any record associated with this Software Data Model Type MUST conform
to the ISO/IEC 19770-2-2009 [SWID09] specification. Any such tag
SHOULD use a UTF-8 encoding [RFC3629], but MUST NOT alter the
existing encoding if doing so would invalidate digital signatures
included in the tag.
If generating a new ISO 2009 SWID tag, the software generating the
tag MUST use a Tag Creator RegID that is associated with the
generating software unless this is impossible, in which case it MUST
use "unknown", which indicates the Tag Creator is unknown. (This
conforms to conventions for an unknown Tag Creator in the ISO 2009
SWID specification.) Do not use a RegID associated with any other
party. In particular, it is incorrect to use a Tag Creator RegID
associated with the software being described by the tag, the
enterprise that is using the software, or any other entity except
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that of the party that built the tool that is generating the SWID
tag. This reflects the requirement that the Tag Creator RegID
identify the party that created the tag.
6.2.2. Guidance on Creation of Software Identifiers from ISO 2009 SWID
Tags
A Software Identifier generated from an ISO 2009 SWID tag is
expressed as a concatenation of the value of the Tag Creator RegID
field and the Unique ID field. Specifically, it MUST be of the form:
TAG_CREATOR_REGID "_" "_" UNIQUE_ID. Specifically, the Software
Identifier consists of, the Tag Creator RegID and the Unique ID from
the tag connected with a double underscore (_), without any other
connecting character or whitespace.
7. Relationship to Other Specifications
This specification is expected to participate in a standard NEA
architecture. As such, it is expected to be used in conjunction with
the other protocols used in a NEA exchange. In particular, SWIMA
Attributes are conveyed over PB-TNC [RFC5793], which is in turn
conveyed over some variant of PT (either PT-TLS [RFC6876] or PT-EAP
[RFC7171]). These protocols have an especially important role, as
they are responsible for ensuring that attributes defined under this
specification are delivered reliably, securely, and to the
appropriate party.
It is important to note that the Product Information, Numeric
Version, and String Version attributes defined in the PA-TNC
specification [RFC5792] are also meant to convey information about
installed applications and the versions thereof. As such, there is
some conceptual overlap between those attributes and the intent of
this specification. However, PA-TNC was designed to respond to very
specific queries about specific classes of products, while the SWIMA
specification is able to convey a broader query, resulting in a more
comprehensive set of evidence regarding an endpoint's installed
software. As such, this specification provides important
capabilities not present in the PA-TNC specification.
The NEA architecture is intended to support a broad range of
activities and, as such, might be employed by other specifications.
For example, requirement T-001 in the SACM Requirements document
[RFC8248] notes that NEA can support data collection from endpoints
within the broader SACM architecture. (Other parts of the NEA
architecture, which SWIMA uses, meet the other SACM data transport
requirements.) In the SACM architecture, a SWIMA-PV corresponds to a
"SACM Collector" and a SWIMA-PC corresponds to a "SACM Internal
Collector". In the SACM architecture, the SWIMA specification can
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support activities relating to software inventory collection.
Specifically, SWIMA supports the SACM "Endpoint Posture Attribute
Value Collection" use case (section 2.1.3 in [RFC7632]) by describing
a collection mechanism that enables event driven, scheduled, and ad-
hoc data collection of software inventory information. SWIMA's
flexibility with regard to the format of inventory data records means
that it is compatible with virtually any data format that implements
SACM's "Define, Publish, Query, and Retrieve Security Automation
Data" (section 2.1.1 in [RFC7632]). This is just one example of how
SWIMA can support broader security solution standards. Note that,
while SWIMA can support these SACM use cases, SWIMA has no
dependencies upon the SACM architecture or any other context in which
NEA might reasonably be applied.
8. Security Considerations
This section discusses some of the security threats facing Posture
Collectors and Posture Validators that implement the SWIMA protocol.
This section primarily notes potential issues for implementers to
consider, although it does contain a handful of normative
requirements to address certain security issues. The issues
identified below focus on capabilities specific to this document.
Implementers are advised to consult other relevant NEA
specifications, particularly [RFC5209] (the NEA Architecture) and
[RFC5792] (PA-TNC), for security issues that are applicable to such
components in general.
8.1. Evidentiary Value of Software Inventory Evidence Records
The degree to which an endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection accurately reflects the endpoint's actual software load
and any changes made to this software load is dependent on the
accuracy of the tools used to populate and manage the software
inventory evidence records in this collection. While the SWIMA-PC is
required to detect changes to an endpoint's Software Inventory
Evidence Collection in near real-time, some tools might not be
designed to update records in the Software Inventory Evidence
Collection in real time. This can result in a collection that is
out-of-sync with actual system state. Moreover, tools might
inaccurately characterize software, or fail to properly record its
removal. Finally, it is likely that there will be software on the
endpoint that is not tracked by any source and thus is not reflected
in the Software Inventory Evidence Collection. Tools that implement
SWIMA ought to be aware of these potential issues and minimize them,
but completely eliminating such issues is likely impossible. Users
of collected software inventory evidence records need to understand
that the information provided by the SWIMA capability cannot be
treated as completely accurate. Nonetheless, having endpoints report
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this information can still provide useful insights into the state of
the endpoint's software load, and can alert administrators and policy
tools of situations that require remediation.
8.2. Sensitivity of Collected Records
Collected software records can be sensitive in nature. This can
include both security sensitivities and privacy sensitivities.
Privacy sensitivities are discussed more in Section 9. With regard
to security, inventory records represent a wealth of information
about the endpoint in question and, for an adversary who does not
already have access to the endpoint, a collection of the endpoint's
inventory records might provide many details that are useful for
mounting an attack. A list of the inventory records associated with
an endpoint reveals a list of software installed on the endpoint.
This list can be very detailed, noting specific versions and even
patch levels, which an adversary can use to identify vulnerable
software and design efficacious attacks.
In addition, other information might also be gleaned from a
collection of software inventory records:
o An inventory record might include information about where the
product was installed on a given endpoint. This can reveal
details about the file organization of that endpoint that an
attacker can utilize.
o An inventory record might include information about how the
software was provided to the endpoint, who in an organization
signs off on the package release, and who packaged the product for
installation. This information might be used as a starting point
for the development of supply chain attacks.
o Events affecting inventory records are reported with timestamps
indicating when each given event occurred. This can give the
attacker an indication of how quickly an organization distributes
patches and updates, helping the attacker determine how long an
attack window might remain open.
Any consolidated software inventory is a potential risk, because such
an inventory can provide an adversary an insight into the
enterprise's configuration and management process. It is recommended
that a centralized software inventory record collection be protected
against unauthorized access. Mechanisms to accomplish this can
include encrypting the data at rest, ensuring that access to the data
is limited only to authorized individuals and processes, and other
basic security precautions.
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8.3. Integrity of Endpoint Records
SWIMA-PCs maintain records of detected changes to the endpoint's
Software Inventory Evidence Collection. These records are used to
respond to a SWIMA-PV's request for change events. The SWIMA-PV
might use a list of reported events to update its understanding of
the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection without needing
to receive a full inventory report from the SWIMA-PC. For this
reason, preserving the integrity of the SWIMA-PC's record of events
is extremely important. If an attacker modifies the SWIMA-PC's
record of changes to the endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence
Collection, this might cause the SWIMA-PV's understanding of the
endpoint's Software Inventory Evidence Collection to differ from its
actual state. Results might include leading the SWIMA-PV to believe
that absent software was present, that present software was absent,
that patches have been installed even if this is not the case, or to
be unaware of other changes to Software Inventory Evidence Records.
As such, the SWIMA-PC MUST take steps to protect the integrity of its
event records.
In addition, records of established SWIMA-PV subscriptions also
require protection against manipulation or corruption. If an
attacker is able to modify or delete records of an established
subscription by a SWIMA-PV, the SWIMA-PC might fail to correctly
fulfill this subscription. The SWIMA-PV would not be aware that its
subscription was not being correctly fulfilled unless it received
additional information that indicated a discrepancy. For example,
the SWIMA-PV might collect a full inventory and realize from this
that certain events had not been correctly reported in accordance
with an established subscription. For this reason, the SWIMA-PC MUST
protect the integrity of subscription records.
8.4. SWIMA-PC Access Permissions
A SWIMA-PC requires sufficient permissions to collect Software
Inventory Evidence Records from all of its supported sources, as well
as sufficient permissions to interact with the endpoint's Posture
Broker Client. With regard to the former, this might require
permissions to read the contents of directories throughout the file
system. Depending on the operating environment and other activities
undertaken by a SWIMA-PC (or software that incorporates a SWIMA-PC as
one of its capabilities) additional permissions might be required by
the SWIMA-PC software. The SWIMA-PC SHOULD NOT be granted
permissions beyond what it needs in order to fulfill its duties.
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8.5. Sanitization of Record Fields
Not all sources of software inventory evidence are necessarily
tightly controlled. For example, consider a source that gathers
.swid files from the endpoint's file system. Any party could create
a new .swid file that could be collected and turned into a Software
Inventory Evidence Record. As a result, it is important that the
contents of source information not be automatically trusted. In
particular, tools that read source information and the Software
Inventory Evidence Records derived therefrom, including SWIMA-PCs,
need to be careful to sanitize input to prevent buffer overflow
attacks, encoding attacks, and other weaknesses that might be
exploited by an adversary who can control the contents of a record.
8.6. PA-TNC Security Threats
In addition to the aforementioned considerations the SWIMA protocol
is subject to the same security threats as other PA-TNC transactions,
as noted in Section 5.2 of PA-TNC [RFC5792]. These include, but are
not limited to, attribute theft, message fabrication, attribute
modification, attribute replay, attribute insertion, and denial of
service. Implementers are advised to consult the PA-TNC
specification to better understand these security issues.
9. Privacy Considerations
As noted in Section 8.2, if an adversary can gain an understanding of
the software installed on an endpoint, they can utilize this to
launch attacks and maintain footholds on this endpoint. For this
reason, the NEA Server needs to ensure adequate safeguards are in
place to prevent exposure of collected inventory records. For
similar reasons, it is advisable that an endpoint only send records
to a NEA Server that is authorized to receive this information and
that can be trusted to safeguard this information after collection.
In addition, software inventory information can lead to insights
about the endpoint's primary user if that user is able to install
software. (Note that users might be "able" to install their own
software even if they are not "allowed" to do so.) This is
especially true on endpoints that support "apps", as individual apps
can be closely tied to specific groups or activities. This could
conceivably allow inferences about things such as a user's hobbies,
the banks and other financial institutions that they use, and
information about the user's race, sex, or sexual orientation.
Organizations that collect software inventory information from
endpoints ought to make sure the endpoints' users are aware of this
collection. In addition, organizations should be aware that a
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software inventory associated with an individual, such as the
inventory of the individual's primary endpoint, could expose
sensitive personal information. For this reason, privacy safeguards
are necessary for collected inventory information. Such safeguards
would require not only protection of the inventory's confidentiality,
but also appropriate access controls so that only those trained in
relevant privacy requirements are able to view the data.
10. IANA Considerations
This section extends multiple existing IANA registries.
Specifically, it extends the PA-TNC Attribute Types and PA-TNC Error
Codes defined in the PA-TNC specification [RFC5792] and the PA-
Subtypes registry defined in the PB-TNC specification [RFC5793] and
extended in PA-TNC. This specification only adds values to these
registries and does not alter how these registries work or are
maintained. Consult the appropriate specifications for details on
the operations and maintenance of these registries.
10.1. PA Subtypes
The following is an extension to the PA Subtype registry [2] defined
in section 7.2 of the PA-TNC specification [RFC5792].
+-----+---------+------------------+------------------------+
| PEN | Integer | Name | Defining Specification |
+-----+---------+------------------+------------------------+
| 0 | 9 | SWIMA Attributes | [RFC-to-be] |
+-----+---------+------------------+------------------------+
10.2. Registry for PA-TNC Attribute Types
Section 5.4 of this specification defines several new PA-TNC
attributes. The following values are added to the registry for PA-
TNC Attribute Types defined in the PA-TNC specification. Note that
Table 1 in Section 5.4 lists these attributes but uses a hexadecimal
value to identify their associated integer. The integer values given
in that table are identical to those provided here. Note also that
Table 1 includes an entry for PA-TNC Error attributes, but the IANA
information associated with that attribute is already defined in the
PA-TNC specification and is not reproduced here.
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+-----+---------+----------------------------+----------------------+
| PEN | Integer | Name | Defining |
| | | | Specification |
+-----+---------+----------------------------+----------------------+
| 0 | 13 | SWIMA Request | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 14 | Software Identifier | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | Inventory | |
| | | | |
| 0 | 15 | Software Identifier Events | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 16 | Software Inventory | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 17 | Software Events | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 18 | Subscription Status | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | Request | |
| | | | |
| 0 | 19 | Subscription Status | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | Response | |
| | | | |
| 0 | 20 | Source Metadata Request | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 21 | Source Metadata Response | [RFC-to-be] |
+-----+---------+----------------------------+----------------------+
10.3. Registry for PA-TNC Error Codes
Section 5.16 of this specification defines several new PA-TNC Error
Codes. The following values are added to the registry for PA-TNC
Error Codes defined in the PA-TNC specification. Note that Table 8
in Section 5.16 lists these codes but uses a hexadecimal value to
identify their associated integer. The integer values given in that
table are identical to those provided here.
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+----+--------+-------------------------------------+---------------+
| PE | Intege | Name | Defining |
| N | r | | Specification |
+----+--------+-------------------------------------+---------------+
| 0 | 4 | SWIMA_ERROR | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 5 | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_DENIED_ERROR | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 6 | SWIMA_RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE_ERROR | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | | |
| 0 | 7 | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_FULFILLMENT_ERRO | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | R | |
| | | | |
| 0 | 8 | SWIMA_SUBSCRIPTION_ID_REUSE_ERROR | [RFC-to-be] |
+----+--------+-------------------------------------+---------------+
10.4. Registry for Software Data Models
The name for this registry is "Software Data Model Types". Each
entry in this registry should include a human readable name, an SMI
Private Enterprise Number, a decimal integer value between 1 and
2^8-1 (inclusive), and a reference to the specification where the use
of this data model is defined. This specification needs to provide
both a description of the format used by the data model and the
procedures by which Software Identifiers are derived from a record
expressed using this data model. Note that a specification that just
defines the data model structure and its use is generally not
sufficient as it would likely lack the procedures for constructing a
Software Identifier. This is why the table below references the
current specification for ISO SWID tags, rather than using the actual
ISO SWID tag specification.
The following entries for this registry are defined in this document.
They are the initial entries in the registry for Software Data Model
Types. Additional entries to this registry are added by Expert
Review with Specification Required, following the guidelines in
[RFC8126].
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+-----+---------+-----------------------------+---------------------+
| PEN | Integer | Name | Defining |
| | | | Specification |
+-----+---------+-----------------------------+---------------------+
| 0 | 0 | ISO 2015 SWID Tags using | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | XML | |
| | | | |
| 0 | 1 | ISO 2009 SWID Tags using | [RFC-to-be] |
| | | XML | |
| | | | |
| 0 | 192-255 | Reserved for local | N/A |
| | | enterprise use | |
+-----+---------+-----------------------------+---------------------+
11. References
11.1. Normative References
[NIST8060]
Waltermire, D., Cheikes, B., Feldman, L., and G. Witte,
"Guidelines for the Creation of Interoperable Software
Identification (SWID) Tags", April 2016.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC3339] Klyne, G. and C. Newman, "Date and Time on the Internet:
Timestamps", RFC 3339, DOI 10.17487/RFC3339, July 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3339>.
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, DOI 10.17487/RFC3629, November
2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3629>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
[RFC5198] Klensin, J. and M. Padlipsky, "Unicode Format for Network
Interchange", RFC 5198, DOI 10.17487/RFC5198, March 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5198>.
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[RFC5792] Sangster, P. and K. Narayan, "PA-TNC: A Posture Attribute
(PA) Protocol Compatible with Trusted Network Connect
(TNC)", RFC 5792, DOI 10.17487/RFC5792, March 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5792>.
[RFC8089] Kerwin, M., "The "file" URI Scheme", RFC 8089,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8089, February 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8089>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[SWID09] The International Organization for Standardization/
International Electrotechnical Commission, "Information
Technology - Software Asset Management - Part 2: Software
Identification Tag, ISO/IEC 19770-2", November 2009.
[SWID15] The International Organization for Standardization/
International Electrotechnical Commission, "Information
Technology - Software Asset Management - Part 2: Software
Identification Tag, ISO/IEC 19770-2", October 2015.
11.2. Informative References
[RFC5209] Sangster, P., Khosravi, H., Mani, M., Narayan, K., and J.
Tardo, "Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA): Overview and
Requirements", RFC 5209, DOI 10.17487/RFC5209, June 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5209>.
[RFC5793] Sahita, R., Hanna, S., Hurst, R., and K. Narayan, "PB-TNC:
A Posture Broker (PB) Protocol Compatible with Trusted
Network Connect (TNC)", RFC 5793, DOI 10.17487/RFC5793,
March 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5793>.
[RFC6876] Sangster, P., Cam-Winget, N., and J. Salowey, "A Posture
Transport Protocol over TLS (PT-TLS)", RFC 6876,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6876, February 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6876>.
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[RFC7171] Cam-Winget, N. and P. Sangster, "PT-EAP: Posture Transport
(PT) Protocol for Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
Tunnel Methods", RFC 7171, DOI 10.17487/RFC7171, May 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7171>.
[RFC7632] Waltermire, D. and D. Harrington, "Endpoint Security
Posture Assessment: Enterprise Use Cases", RFC 7632,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7632, September 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7632>.
[RFC8248] Cam-Winget, N. and L. Lorenzin, "Security Automation and
Continuous Monitoring (SACM) Requirements", RFC 8248,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8248, September 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8248>.
11.3. URIs
[1] https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/uri-schemes.xhtml
[2] https://www.iana.org/assignments/pb-tnc-parameters/pb-tnc-
parameters.xhtml#pb-tnc-parameters-2
Authors' Addresses
Charles Schmidt
The MITRE Corporation
202 Burlington Road
Bedford, MA 01730
USA
Email: cmschmidt@mitre.org
Daniel Haynes
The MITRE Corporation
202 Burlington Road
Bedford, MA 01730
USA
Email: dhaynes@mitre.org
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Chris Coffin
The MITRE Corporation
202 Burlington Road
Bedford, MA 01730
USA
Email: ccoffin@mitre.org
David Waltermire
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive
Gaithersburg, Maryland
USA
Email: david.waltermire@nist.gov
Jessica Fitzgerald-McKay
United States National Security Agency
9800 Savage Road
Ft. Meade, Maryland
USA
Email: jmfitz2@radium.ncsc.mil
Schmidt, et al. Expires October 8, 2018 [Page 94]
