Re: [RFC][PATCH 2/3] SLIM

From: Stephen Smalley (sds@private)
Date: Tue Nov 29 2005 - 06:11:49 PST


On Mon, 2005-11-28 at 21:32 -0500, Tim Fraser wrote:
> SLIM watches what privileged processes read, and "demotes" those that
> read potentially-dangerous low-integrity data.  T

BTW, I think we need to distinguish between low water mark as a model
and SLIM as a particular implementation in this discussion.  It isn't
clear whether SLIM is consistent with the above description.  Is SLIM
supposed to monitor actual data reads or just the descriptor acquisition
(whether via open, inheritance, or local IPC transfer)?  Monitoring
actual data reads is naturally problematic (e.g. AIO, memory mapped
files), but SLIM makes a partial effort via use of the file_permission
hook (but oddly does not use file_mmap).  SLIM also appears to adjust
the task levels upon inode_permission, so it appears to apply the
demotion at open time as well, but does nothing upon inheritance or
local IPC transfer.  SELinux, in comparison, checks access upon open,
inheritance, and local IPC transfer (for complete control of rights
propagation) as well as revalidating access when possible upon actual
operations (for limited support for revocation for relabeled files or
policy changes).

-- 
Stephen Smalley
National Security Agency



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