[taler-docs] branch master updated: add first draft of auditor manual

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     new 26003a9  add first draft of auditor manual
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commit 26003a906880384d5c6e63f85d3d26aafe33a405
Author: Christian Grothoff <address@hidden>
AuthorDate: Tue Nov 12 19:35:20 2019 +0100

    add first draft of auditor manual
---
 index.rst                |   1 +
 taler-auditor-manual.rst | 505 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 506 insertions(+)

diff --git a/index.rst b/index.rst
index 444019e..5c47d0c 100644
--- a/index.rst
+++ b/index.rst
@@ -58,6 +58,7 @@ Documentation Overview
   taler-merchant-api-tutorial
   taler-bank-manual
   taler-backoffice-manual
+  taler-auditor-manual
   developers-manual.rst
   anastasis
   libeufin/index
diff --git a/taler-auditor-manual.rst b/taler-auditor-manual.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ade253d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/taler-auditor-manual.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,505 @@
+GNU Taler Auditor Operator Manual
+#################################
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+This manual is an early draft that still needs significant editing work
+to become readable.
+
+About GNU Taler
+---------------
+
+GNU Taler is an open protocol for an electronic payment system with a
+free software reference implementation. GNU Taler offers secure, fast
+and easy payment processing using well understood cryptographic
+techniques. GNU Taler allows customers to remain anonymous, while
+ensuring that merchants can be held accountable by governments. Hence,
+GNU Taler is compatible with anti-money-laundering (AML) and
+know-your-customer (KYC) regulation, as well as data protection
+regulation (such as GDPR).
+
+
+About this manual
+-----------------
+
+This tutorial targets exchange operators, auditors and governments
+who want to run the auditor to verify that a GNU Taler exchange is
+operating correctly.
+
+
+Organizational prerequisites
+----------------------------
+
+Operating a GNU Taler auditor means that you (henceforth: auditor) have a
+business relationship with (or regulatory authority over) a GNU Taler exchange
+operator (henceforth: exchange).  Your objective is to verify that the
+exchange is operating correctly, and if not to alert the exchange, the
+state or even the public about any missbehavior to limit financial losses
+to other parties.
+
+To perform this duty, you will need at least (read-only) access to the bank
+transactions of the exchange, as well as a continuously synchronized replica
+of the exchange's database.  Then, with the software provided, you can verify
+the cryptographic proofs collected by the exchange and detect if any improper
+bank transactions are made.  Naturally, as an auditor you do not have to limit
+yourself to this activity: auditing the source code, operational procedures,
+physical security and even checking the background of the individuals
+operating the exchange can be in-scope.  However, as those additional checks
+are not easily standardized, this manual only focuses on the audit of the
+exchange's database and wire transfers.
+
+Every auditor also needs to operate a Postgres database.  The data collected
+will include sensitive information about Taler users, including withdrawals
+made by consumers and income received by merchants.  As a result, the auditor
+is expected to provide high confidentiality for the database.  In general, the
+auditor does not have to offer high-availability: the exchange operator can
+continue operations without the auditor, and the auditor can catch up with it
+later when the auditor's systems are restored. However, of course any downtime
+would provide a window of opportunity for fraud and should thus be minimized.
+Finally, the auditor's copy of the exchange's database can be useful as a 
backup
+to the exchange in case the exchange experiences a loss of its own copies. 
Thus,
+business agreements between auditor and exchanges may include availability
+requirements as well.
+
+
+Architecture overview
+---------------------
+
+Taler is a pure payment system, not a new crypto-currency. As such, it
+operates in a traditional banking context. In particular, this means that in
+order to receive funds via Taler, the merchant must have a regular bank
+account, and payments can be executed in ordinary currencies such as USD or
+EUR. Similarly, the exchange must interact with a bank. The bank of the
+exchange holds the exchange’s funds in an escrow account.  As a result,
+exchanges operate in a regulated environment, and auditors provide a crucial
+oversight function.
+
+Auditors should generally be independent third parties that verify that the
+exchange operates correctly.  However, an exchange is likely to also run the
+auditing logic, as it is also used to calculate the exchange’s profits, risk
+and liabilities.  Furthermore, it's usually a good idea to not only rely on
+third parties to verify one's own work.
+
+The Taler software stack for an auditor consists of the following
+components:
+
+-  Wire plugin
+   A wire plugin enables the auditor to talk to the bank. Its role
+   is to allow the auditor to retrieve incoming and outgoing wire
+   transfers made by the exchange.  Wire plugins are
+   *plugins* as there can be many different implementations to deal with
+   different banking standards. Wire plugins are automatically located
+   and used by the auditor, but must be configured with the appropriate
+   credentials.
+
+-  DBMS
+   Postgres
+   The auditor requires a DBMS to stores a local copy of the transaction 
history for
+   the Taler exchange, as well as for its own internal bookkeeping and 
checkpointing.
+   The DBMS is assumed to be assure the auditor of the database invariants 
(foreign
+   key, uniqueness, length restrictions).  Should the exported data from the 
exchange
+   fail to be imported due to constraint violations, this is an immediate 
serious
+   concern that must be addressed manually.  The software only verifies the 
content
+   of a well-formed exchange database (well-formed with respect to SQL).
+   For now, the GNU Taler reference implemenation
+   only supports Postgres, but the code could be easily extended to
+   support another DBMS.
+
+-  The auditor Web service
+   The auditor is expected to provide a public Web service. At this REST API,
+   merchants can (probabilistically) provide deposit confirmations, allowing
+   the auditor to detect if an exchange is underreporting deposits.
+
+   In the future, the Web service should be extended to allow customers and
+   merchants to automatically upload cryptographic proof of other violations
+   of the specification by the exchange.  However, for now it is assumed that
+   the respective cryptographic proofs are reported and verified manually ---
+   as with a well-behaved exchange this should obviously be a rare event.
+   
+   The main binary of this component is the ``taler-auditor-httpd``.
+   
+-  The wire-auditor
+   The wire auditor verifies that the bank transactions performed by the 
exchange
+   were done properly.  This component must have access to the bank account
+   of the exchange, as well as to a copy of the exchange's database.
+   The main binary of this component is the ``taler-wire-auditor``.
+
+-  The (main) auditor
+   The main auditor logic checks the various signatures, totals up the
+   amounts and checks for arithmetic inconsistencies. It also
+   computes the expected bank balance, revenue and risk exposure of the
+   exchange operator. The main binary of this component is the 
``taler-auditor``.
+
+-  The renderer
+   A rendering script uses the JSON output of ``taler-wire-auditor``
+   and ``taler-auditor`` and combines it with a LaTeX template into
+   a human-readable audit report.  The resulting report includes performance
+   data, reports on hard violations (resulting in financial losses)
+   and reports on soft violations (such
+   as the exchange not performing certain operations in a timely fashion).
+   The report also includes figures on the losses of violations. Careful
+   reading of the report is required, as not every detail in the report
+   is necessarily indicative of a problem.
+   
+
+Installation
+============
+
+Please install the following packages before proceeding with the
+exchange compilation.
+
+-  GNU autoconf >= 2.69
+
+-  GNU automake >= 1.14
+
+-  GNU libtool >= 2.4
+
+-  GNU autopoint >= 0.19
+
+-  GNU libltdl >= 2.4
+
+-  GNU libunistring >= 0.9.3
+
+-  libcurl >= 7.26 (or libgnurl >= 7.26)
+
+-  GNU libmicrohttpd >= 0.9.59
+
+-  GNU libgcrypt >= 1.6
+
+-  libjansson >= 2.7
+
+-  Postgres >= 9.6, including libpq
+
+-  texlive-latex-extra
+
+-  python3-jinja2
+   
+-  libgnunetutil (from Git)
+
+-  GNU Taler exchange (from Git)
+
+Except for the last two, these are available in most GNU/Linux
+distributions and should just be installed using the respective package
+manager.
+
+The following instructions will show how to install libgnunetutil and
+the exchange (which includes the code for the auditor).
+
+Before you install libgnunetutil, you must download and install the
+dependencies mentioned above, otherwise the build may succeed but fail
+to export some of the tooling required by Taler.
+
+To download and install libgnunetutil, proceed as follows:
+
+::
+
+   $ git clone https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet/
+   $ cd gnunet/
+   $ ./bootstrap
+   $ ./configure [--prefix=GNUNETPFX]
+   $ # Each dependency can be fetched from non standard locations via
+   $ # the '--with-<LIBNAME>' option. See './configure --help'.
+   $ make
+   # make install
+
+If you did not specify a prefix, GNUnet will install to ``/usr/local``,
+which requires you to run the last step as ``root``.
+
+To download and install the GNU Taler exchange, proceeds as follows:
+
+::
+
+   $ git clone git://git.taler.net/exchange
+   $ cd exchange
+   $ ./bootstrap
+   $ ./configure [--prefix=EXCHANGEPFX] \
+                 [--with-gnunet=GNUNETPFX]
+   $ # Each dependency can be fetched from non standard locations via
+   $ # the '--with-<LIBNAME>' option. See './configure --help'.
+   $ make
+   # make install
+
+If you did not specify a prefix, the exchange will install to
+``/usr/local``, which requires you to run the last step as ``root``.
+Note that you have to specify ``--with-gnunet=/usr/local`` if you
+installed GNUnet to ``/usr/local`` in the previous step.
+
+
+Configuration
+=============
+
+The auditor's configuration works the same way as the configuration of other
+Taler components. See for example the exchange manual for details on the
+configuration and the ``taler-config`` configuration tool.  This section
+discusses configuration options related to the auditor.
+
+.. _Keys:
+
+Keys
+----
+
+The auditor works with one signing key to certify that it is auditing
+a particular exchange's denomination keys.
+
+The following values are to be configured in the section [auditor]:
+
+-  AUDITOR_PRIV_FILE: Path to the auditor’s private key file.
+
+.. _Serving:
+
+Serving
+-------
+
+The auditor can serve HTTP over both TCP and UNIX domain socket.
+
+The following values are to be configured in the section [auditor]:
+
+-  serve: must be set to tcp to serve HTTP over TCP, or unix to serve
+   HTTP over a UNIX domain socket
+
+-  port: Set to the TCP port to listen on if ``serve`` is ``tcp``.
+
+-  unixpath: set to the UNIX domain socket path to listen on if ``serve`` is
+   ``unix``
+
+-  unixpath_mode: number giving the mode with the access permission MASK
+   for the unixpath (i.e. 660 = rw-rw—-).
+
+
+.. _Bank-account:
+
+Bank account
+------------
+
+Bank accounts for the auditor are configured in exactly the
+same way as bank accounts for the exchange. See the exchange
+documentation for details.
+
+.. _Database:
+
+Database
+--------
+
+The option db under section [auditor] gets the DB backend’s name the
+exchange is going to use. So far, only ``db = postgres`` is supported. After
+choosing the backend, it is mandatory to supply the connection string
+(namely, the database name). This is possible in two ways:
+
+-  via an environment variable: TALER_AUDITORDB_POSTGRES_CONFIG.
+
+-  via configuration option CONFIG, under section [auditordb-BACKEND].
+   For example, the demo exchange is configured as follows:
+
+::
+
+   [auditor]
+   ...
+   DB = postgres
+   ...
+
+   [auditordb-postgres]
+   CONFIG = postgres:///auditordemo
+
+If an exchange runs its own auditor, it may use the same database for
+the auditor and the exchange itself.
+
+The ``taler-auditor-dbinit`` tool is used to initialize the auditor's
+tables. After running this tool, the rights to CREATE or DROP tables
+are no longer required and should be removed.
+
+   
+.. _Deployment:
+
+Deployment
+==========
+
+.. _Wallets:
+
+Before GNU Taler wallets will happily interact with an exchange,
+the respective auditor's public key (to be obtained via ``gnunet-ecc``)
+must be added under the respectivy currency to the wallet.  This
+is usually expected to be hard-coded into the Taler wallet.
+
+Users can also manually add auditors for a particular currency via a
+Web page offering the respective pairing.
+
+FIXME: explain how that Web page works!
+
+
+.. _Exchange:
+
+Exchange
+--------
+
+The next step is to add the exchange's master public key and the base
+URL of the exchange to the list of exchange's audited by the auditor.
+This is done using the ``taler-auditor-exchange`` tool.  The tool
+basically creates the respective record in the auditor's database.
+
+If this step is skipped, the auditor will malfunction at all future
+stages with a foreign key violation, as it doesn't know the exchange's
+master public key.
+
+::
+
+   taler-auditor-exchange -m $MASTER_PUB -u $EXCHANGE_BASE_URL
+
+
+.. _Denominations:
+
+Denominations
+-------------
+
+This step must be performed for each denomination (key) offered by the
+exchange.  As denomination keys expire, this step has to be repeated
+periodically whenever new keys are created.  During denomination key setup,
+the exchange operator obtains a *blob* with the data about denomination keys
+that the exchange operator needs to get signed by every auditor the exchange
+wishes (or is forced to) work with.
+
+In a normal scenario, an auditor must have some secure business proces to
+receive the blob to sign (Website, manual delivery, ...).  Note that the
+blob does not contain confidential data, but signing the wrong keys would
+be fatal.  Given the blob, the auditor would sign it using:
+
+::
+
+   taler-auditor-sign -m EXCHANGE_MASTER_PUB -r BLOB -u AUDITOR_URL -o 
OUTPUT_FILE
+
+Those arguments are all mandatory.
+
+-  ``EXCHANGE_MASTER_PUB`` the base32 Crockford-encoded exchange’s
+   master public key. 
+
+-  ``BLOB`` the blob generated by the ``taler-exchange-keyup`` tool.
+
+-  ``AUDITOR_URL`` the URL that identifies the auditor.
+
+-  ``OUTPUT_FILE`` where on the disk the signed blob is to be saved.
+
+``OUTPUT_FILE`` must then be provided to the exchange and there copied into
+the directory specified by the option ``AUDITOR_BASE_DIR`` under the section
+``[exchangedb]``.  The contents of ``OUTPUT_FILE`` can be public and require
+no special handling.
+
+If the auditor has been correctly added, the exchange’s ``/keys``
+response will contain an entry in the ``auditors`` array mentioning the
+auditor’s URL.
+
+
+.. _Database:
+
+Database
+--------
+
+The next key step for the auditor is to configure replication of the
+exchange's database in-house. The ``taler-exchange-dbinit`` tool should be
+used to setup the schema.  For replication of the actual SQL data, we refer to
+the Postgres manual.  We note that asynchronous replication should suffice.
+
+Note that during replication, the only statements that may be performed
+are INSERTS.  CREATE/DELETE/DROP/UPDATE are generally not allowed.  A
+special exception applies when an exchange runs garbage collection on
+old data that is no longer relevant from a regulatory point of view.
+
+While the auditor could just run the garbage collection logic locally as well,
+this may interact badly with the standard Postgres synchronization
+mechanisms. A good solution for secure (against exchanges deleting arbitrary
+data) and convenient (with respect to automatic and timely synchronization)
+garbage collection still needs to be developed.
+
+
+.. _Operation:
+
+Operation
+=========
+
+.. _Web service:
+
+Web service
+-----------
+
+The ``taler-auditor-httpd`` runs the required REST API for the auditor.
+The service must have INSERT rights against the auditor's database.
+FIXME: note which table?
+
+As the ``taler-auditor-httpd`` does not include HTTPS-support, it is
+advisable to run it behind a reverse proxy that offers TLS termination.
+
+
+.. _Audit:
+
+Audit
+-----
+
+Performing an audit is done by invoking the ``taler-auditor`` and
+``taler-wire-auditor`` tools respectively. Both tools generate JSON
+files, which can then be combined using the ``contrib/render.py''
+script into the TeX report.
+
+::
+
+   $ taler-audit > audit.json
+   $ taler-wire-audit > wire.json
+   $ contrib/render.py audit.json wire.json \
+     < contrib/auditor-report.tex.j2 \
+     > auditor-report.tex
+   $ pdflatex auditor-report.tex
+   $ pdflatex auditor-report.tex # run twice to resolve references
+
+This generates a file ``auditor-report.pdf`` with all of the
+issues found and the financial assessment of the exchange.
+
+We note that ``taler-audit`` and ``taler-wire-audit`` by default
+run in incremental mode. As a result, running the commands again
+will only check the database entries that have been added since
+the last run.  The ``-r`` option can be used to force a full
+check since the beginning of time. However, as this may require
+excessive time and interactions with the bank (which may not even
+have the wire transfer records anymore), this is not recommended
+in a production setup.
+
+
+
+.. _Database-upgrades:
+
+Database upgrades
+-----------------
+
+Currently, there is no way to upgrade the database between Taler
+versions.
+
+The auditor database can be re-initialized using:
+
+::
+
+   $ taler-auditor-dbinit -r
+
+However, running this command will result in all data in the database being
+lost, which may result in significant commputation (and bandwidth consumption
+with the bank) when the auditor is next launched, as it will re-verify all
+historic transactions.  Hence this should not be done in a production system.
+
+
+
+
+
+.. _Revocations:
+
+Revocations
+~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+When an auditor detects that the private key of a denomination key pair has
+been compromised, one important step is to revoke the denomination key.  The
+exchange operator includes the details on how to revoke a denomination key, so
+the auditor should only have to report (and possibly enforce) this step.
+
+If all denominations of an exchange are revoked, the exchange includes logic
+to wire back all returned funds to the bank accounts from which they
+originate.  If some denominations remain operational, wallets will generally
+exchange old coins of revoked denominations for new coins -- while providing
+additional information to demonstrate that these coins were not forged from
+the compromised private key but obtained via a legitimate withdraw operation.
+
+

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