Re: lsm stacker

From: Stephen Smalley (sds@private)
Date: Thu Jun 30 2005 - 13:13:28 PDT


On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 12:47 -0700, Casey Schaufler wrote:
> >  >- most LSMs remaining out of tree,
> 
> That's hardly surprising given that
> the first response to a proposed
> introduction is always "Well, you
> can do that with SELinux, so it
> shouldn't go in".

Can you point to a specific response that said that?  I don't recall
seeing a LSM rejected by mainline for that reason.  I have seen
rejections due to:
- LSMs that were ad-hoc hacks rather than general mechanisms,
- Modules that weren't within the scope of LSM at all, but were just
trying to use its hooks because the syscall table is no longer exported,
- LSMs that lacked any real users.

But not because you could already do the same thing via SELinux.

> The truth is that security needs change
> and today's hit solution (SELinux) will
> go the way of yesterday's (Trusted
> Solaris/Irix/HPUX) and the ones before
> that. I would hate to see Linux become
> yet another fossil in the slate beds
> of system security because it
> overcommitted to a particular
> security fad.

This seems to miss the point that SELinux is already upstream, open
source, and community-based.  So SELinux is quite capable of changing
(and being changed) in response to evolving requirements, without any
encumbrances.

-- 
Stephen Smalley
National Security Agency



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