V-261922

Discussion

Without sufficient granularity of time stamps, it is not possible to adequately determine the chronological order of records. Time stamps generated by PostgreSQL must include date and time. Granularity of time measurements refers to the precision available in time stamp values. Granularity coarser than one second is not sufficient for audit trail purposes. Time stamp values are typically presented with three or more decimal places of seconds; however, the actual granularity may be coarser than the apparent precision. For example, SQL Server's GETDATE()/CURRENT_TMESTAMP values are presented to three decimal places, but the granularity is not one millisecond: it is about 1/300 of a second. Some DBMS products offer a data type called TIMESTAMP that is not a representation of date and time. Rather, it is a database state counter and does not correspond to calendar and clock time. This requirement does not refer to that meaning of TIMESTAMP.

Check Content

Note: The following instructions use the PGDATA environment variable. Refer to APPENDIX-F for instructions on configuring PGDATA and APPENDIX-I for PGLOG.

As the database administrator (shown here as "postgres"), verify the current log_line_prefix setting by running the following SQL:

$ sudo su - postgres
$ psql -c "SHOW log_line_prefix"

If log_line_prefix does not contain %m, this is a finding.

Check the logs to verify time stamps are being logged:

$ sudo su - postgres
$ cat ${PGDATA?}/${PGLOG?}/<latest_log>
< 2024-02-23 12:53:33.947 EDT postgres postgres 570bd68d.3912 >LOG: connection authorized: user=postgres database=postgres
< 2024-02-23 12:53:41.576 EDT postgres postgres 570bd68d.3912 >LOG: AUDIT: SESSION,1,1,DDL,CREATE TABLE,,,CREATE TABLE test_srg(id INT);,<none>
< 2024-02-23 12:53:44.372 EDT postgres postgres 570bd68d.3912 >LOG: disconnection: session time: 0:00:10.426 user=postgres database=postgres host=[local]

If time stamps are not being logged, this is a finding.