Quoting Eric W. Biederman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > Casey Schaufler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > --- "Eric W. Biederman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > >> Likely. Until we have a generalized LSM interface with 1000 config > >> options like netfilter I don't expect we will have grounds to talk > >> or agree to a common user space interface. Although I could be > >> wrong. > > > > Gulp. I know that many of you are granularity advocates, but I > > have to say that security derived by tweeking 1000 knobs so that > > they are all just right seems a little far fetched to me. I see > > it as poopooing the 3rd and most important part of the reference > > monitor concept, "small enough to analyze". Sure, you can analyse > > the 1000 individual checks, but you'll never be able to describe > > the system behavior as a whole. > > Agreed. I wasn't thinking 1000 individual checks but 1000 different > capabilities, could be either checks or actions, basically fundamental > different capabilities. Things like CIPSO, or the ability to store a > security label on a file. I would not expect most security policies > to use most of them. Neither do I expect Orange book security to > necessarily be what people want to achieve with the LSM. But I > haven't looked at it enough detail to know how things should be > factored, in this case I was simply extrapolating from the iptables > experience where we do have a very large number of options. > > The real point being is that I would be surprised if we could come > to an agreement of a common user space API when we can't agree on how > to compile all of the security modules into the kernel and have them > play nice with each other. > > Assuming we can achieve security modules playing nice with each other > using a mechanism similar to iptables, then what needs to be evaluated > is the specific table configuration we are using on the system, not > the full general set of possibilities. Further I expect that for the > truly security paranoid we want the option to disable further table > changes after the tables have been configured. > > On another side personally I don't see where the idea comes from that > you can describe system behavior as a whole without analyzing the > entire kernel. Has there been work on a sparse like tool that I'm > not aware of to ensure the we always perform the appropriate security > checks on the user/kernel interface boundary?
Yup, see the top of http://www.research.ibm.com/vali/ Pretty cool work that really should be continued. -serge - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
