Smack used to use a mix of smack_known struct and char* throughout its
APIs and implementation. This patch unifies the behaviour and makes it
store and operate exclusively on smack_known struct pointers when managing
labels.
Signed-off-by: Lukasz Pawelczyk <l.pawelczyk@samsung.com>
Conflicts:
security/smack/smack_access.c
security/smack/smack_lsm.c
People keep asking me for permissive mode, and I keep saying "no".
Permissive mode is wrong for more reasons than I can enumerate,
but the compelling one is that it's once on, never off.
Nonetheless, there is an argument to be made for running a
process with lots of permissions, logging which are required,
and then locking the process down. There wasn't a way to do
that with Smack, but this provides it.
The notion is that you start out by giving the process an
appropriate Smack label, such as "ATBirds". You create rules
with a wide range of access and the "b" mode. On Tizen it
might be:
ATBirds System rwxalb
ATBirds User rwxalb
ATBirds _ rwxalb
User ATBirds wb
System ATBirds wb
Accesses that fail will generate audit records. Accesses
that succeed because of rules marked with a "b" generate
log messages identifying the rule, the program and as much
object information as is convenient.
When the system is properly configured and the programs
brought in line with the labeling scheme the "b" mode can
be removed from the rules. When the system is ready for
production the facility can be configured out.
This provides the developer the convenience of permissive
mode without creating a system that looks like it is
enforcing a policy while it is not.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Smack IPC policy requires that the sender have write access
to the receiver. UDS streams don't do per-packet checks. The
only check is done at connect time. The existing code checks
if the connecting process can write to the other, but not the
other way around. This change adds a check that the other end
can write to the connecting process.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schuafler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
This allows to limit ptrace beyond the regular smack access rules.
It adds a smackfs/ptrace interface that allows smack to be configured
to require equal smack labels for PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH access.
See the changes in Documentation/security/Smack.txt below for details.
Signed-off-by: Lukasz Pawelczyk <l.pawelczyk@partner.samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Rafal Krypa <r.krypa@samsung.com>
The order of subject/object is currently reversed in
smack_ptrace_traceme(). It is currently checked if the tracee has a
capability to trace tracer and according to this rule a decision is made
whether the tracer will be allowed to trace tracee.
Signed-off-by: Lukasz Pawelczyk <l.pawelczyk@partner.samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Rafal Krypa <r.krypa@samsung.com>
The syslog control requires that the calling proccess
have the floor ("_") Smack label. Tizen does not run any
processes except for kernel helpers with the floor label.
This changes allows the admin to configure a specific
label for syslog. The default value is the star ("*")
label, effectively removing the restriction. The value
can be set using smackfs/syslog for anyone who wants
a more restrictive behavior.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Linux file locking does not follow the same rules
as other mechanisms. Even though it is a write operation
a process can set a read lock on files which it has open
only for read access. Two programs with read access to
a file can use read locks to communicate.
This is not acceptable in a Mandatory Access Control
environment. Smack treats setting a read lock as the
write operation that it is. Unfortunately, many programs
assume that setting a read lock is a read operation.
These programs are unhappy in the Smack environment.
This patch introduces a new access mode (lock) to address
this problem. A process with lock access to a file can
set a read lock. A process with write access to a file can
set a read lock or a write lock. This prevents a situation
where processes are granted write access just so they can
set read locks.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
The Smack code that matches incoming CIPSO tags with Smack labels
reaches through the NetLabel interfaces and compares the network
data with the CIPSO header associated with a Smack label. This was
done in a ill advised attempt to optimize performance. It works
so long as the categories fit in a single capset, but this isn't
always the case.
This patch changes the Smack code to use the appropriate NetLabel
interfaces to compare the incoming CIPSO header with the CIPSO
header associated with a label. It will always match the CIPSO
headers correctly.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Accepted for the smack-next tree after changing the number of
slots from 128 to 16.
This patch adds a hash table to quicken searching of a smack label by its name.
Basically, the patch improves performance of SMACK initialization. Parsing of
rules involves translation from a string to a smack_known (aka label) entity
which is done in smk_find_entry().
The current implementation of the function iterates over a global list of
smack_known resulting in O(N) complexity for smk_find_entry(). The total
complexity of SMACK initialization becomes O(rules * labels). Therefore it
scales quadratically with a complexity of a system.
Applying the patch reduced the complexity of smk_find_entry() to O(1) as long
as number of label is in hundreds. If the number of labels is increased please
update SMACK_HASH_SLOTS constant defined in security/smack/smack.h. Introducing
the configuration of this constant with Kconfig or cmdline might be a good
idea.
The size of the hash table was adjusted experimentally. The rule set used by
TIZEN contains circa 17K rules for 500 labels. The table above contains
results of SMACK initialization using 'time smackctl apply' bash command.
The 'Ref' is a kernel without this patch applied. The consecutive values
refers to value of SMACK_HASH_SLOTS. Every measurement was repeated three
times to reduce noise.
| Ref | 1 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 128 | 256 | 512
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Run1 | 1.156 | 1.096 | 0.883 | 0.764 | 0.692 | 0.667 | 0.649 | 0.633 | 0.634 | 0.629 | 0.620
Run2 | 1.156 | 1.111 | 0.885 | 0.764 | 0.694 | 0.661 | 0.649 | 0.651 | 0.634 | 0.638 | 0.623
Run3 | 1.160 | 1.107 | 0.886 | 0.764 | 0.694 | 0.671 | 0.661 | 0.638 | 0.631 | 0.624 | 0.638
AVG | 1.157 | 1.105 | 0.885 | 0.764 | 0.693 | 0.666 | 0.653 | 0.641 | 0.633 | 0.630 | 0.627
Surprisingly, a single hlist is slightly faster than a double-linked list.
The speed-up saturates near 64 slots. Therefore I chose value 128 to provide
some margin if more labels were used.
It looks that IO becomes a new bottleneck.
Signed-off-by: Tomasz Stanislawski <t.stanislaws@samsung.com>
Suppliment the smkfsroot mount option with another, smkfstransmute,
that does the same thing but also marks the root inode as
transmutting. This allows a freshly created filesystem to
be mounted with a transmutting heirarchy.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Each Smack label that the kernel has seen is added to a
list of labels. The list of access rules for a given subject
label hangs off of the label list entry for the label.
This patch changes the structures that contain subject
labels to point at the label list entry rather that the
label itself. Doing so removes a label list lookup in
smk_access() that was accounting for the largest single
chunk of Smack overhead.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Smack does not provide access controls on IPv6 communications.
This patch introduces a mechanism for maintaining Smack lables
for local IPv6 communications. It is based on labeling local ports.
The behavior should be compatible with any future "real" IPv6
support as it provides no interfaces for users to manipulate
the labeling. Remote IPv6 connections use the ambient label
the same way that unlabeled IPv4 packets are treated.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Smack is integrated with the POSIX capabilities scheme,
using the capabilities CAP_MAC_OVERRIDE and CAP_MAC_ADMIN to
determine if a process is allowed to ignore Smack checks or
change Smack related data respectively. Smack provides an
additional restriction that if an onlycap value is set
by writing to /smack/onlycap only tasks with that Smack
label are allowed to use CAP_MAC_OVERRIDE.
This change adds CAP_MAC_ADMIN as a capability that is affected
by the onlycap mechanism.
Targeted for git://git.gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
In January of 2012 Al Viro pointed out three bits of code that
he titled "new_inode_smack bogosities". This patch repairs these
errors.
1. smack_sb_kern_mount() included a NULL check that is impossible.
The check and NULL case are removed.
2. smack_kb_kern_mount() included pointless locking. The locking is
removed. Since this is the only place that lock was used the lock
is removed from the superblock_smack structure.
3. smk_fill_super() incorrectly and unnecessarily set the Smack label
for the smackfs root inode. The assignment has been removed.
Targeted for git://gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
V4 updated to current linux-security#next
Targeted for git://gitorious.org/smack-next/kernel.git
Modern application runtime environments like to use
naming schemes that are structured and generated without
human intervention. Even though the Smack limit of 23
characters for a label name is perfectly rational for
human use there have been complaints that the limit is
a problem in environments where names are composed from
a set or sources, including vendor, author, distribution
channel and application name. Names like
softwarehouse-pgwodehouse-coolappstore-mellowmuskrats
are becoming harder to avoid. This patch introduces long
label support in Smack. Labels are now limited to 255
characters instead of the old 23.
The primary reason for limiting the labels to 23 characters
was so they could be directly contained in CIPSO category sets.
This is still done were possible, but for labels that are too
large a mapping is required. This is perfectly safe for communication
that stays "on the box" and doesn't require much coordination
between boxes beyond what would have been required to keep label
names consistent.
The bulk of this patch is in smackfs, adding and updating
administrative interfaces. Because existing APIs can't be
changed new ones that do much the same things as old ones
have been introduced.
The Smack specific CIPSO data representation has been removed
and replaced with the data format used by netlabel. The CIPSO
header is now computed when a label is imported rather than
on use. This results in improved IP performance. The smack
label is now allocated separately from the containing structure,
allowing for larger strings.
Four new /smack interfaces have been introduced as four
of the old interfaces strictly required labels be specified
in fixed length arrays.
The access interface is supplemented with the check interface:
access "Subject Object rwxat"
access2 "Subject Object rwaxt"
The load interface is supplemented with the rules interface:
load "Subject Object rwxat"
load2 "Subject Object rwaxt"
The load-self interface is supplemented with the self-rules interface:
load-self "Subject Object rwxat"
load-self2 "Subject Object rwaxt"
The cipso interface is supplemented with the wire interface:
cipso "Subject lvl cnt c1 c2 ..."
cipso2 "Subject lvl cnt c1 c2 ..."
The old interfaces are maintained for compatibility.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
The transmuting directory feature of Smack requires that
the transmuting attribute be explicitly set in all cases.
It seems the users of this facility would expect that the
transmuting attribute be inherited by subdirectories that
are created in a transmuting directory. This does not seem
to add any additional complexity to the understanding of
how the system works.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
It isn't needed. If you don't set the type of the data associated with
that type it is a pretty obvious programming bug. So why waste the cycles?
Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
After shrinking the common_audit_data stack usage for private LSM data I'm
not going to shrink the data union. To do this I'm going to move anything
larger than 2 void * ptrs to it's own structure and require it to be declared
separately on the calling stack. Thus hot paths which don't need more than
a couple pointer don't have to declare space to hold large unneeded
structures. I could get this down to one void * by dealing with the key
struct and the struct path. We'll see if that is helpful after taking care of
networking.
Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Linus found that the gigantic size of the common audit data caused a big
perf hit on something as simple as running stat() in a loop. This patch
requires LSMs to declare the LSM specific portion separately rather than
doing it in a union. Thus each LSM can be responsible for shrinking their
portion and don't have to pay a penalty just because other LSMs have a
bigger space requirement.
Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Allow query access as a normal user removing the need
for CAP_MAC_ADMIN. Give RW access to /smack/access
for UGO. Do not import smack labels in access check.
Signed-off-by: Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko.j.sakkinen@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <cschaufler@cschaufler-intel.(none)>
There are a number of comments in the Smack code that
are either malformed or include code. This patch cleans
them up.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
This patch is targeted for the smack-next tree.
Smack access checks suffer from two significant performance
issues. In cases where there are large numbers of rules the
search of the single list of rules is wasteful. Comparing the
string values of the smack labels is less efficient than a
numeric comparison would.
These changes take advantage of the Smack label list, which
maintains the mapping of Smack labels to secids and optional
CIPSO labels. Because the labels are kept perpetually, an
access check can be done strictly based on the address of the
label in the list without ever looking at the label itself.
Rather than keeping one global list of rules the rules with
a particular subject label can be based off of that label
list entry. The access check need never look at entries that
do not use the current subject label.
This requires that packets coming off the network with
CIPSO direct Smack labels that have never been seen before
be treated carefully. The only case where they could be
delivered is where the receiving socket has an IPIN star
label, so that case is explicitly addressed.
On a system with 39,800 rules (200 labels in all permutations)
a system with this patch runs an access speed test in 5% of
the time of the old version. That should be a best case
improvement. If all of the rules are associated with the
same subject label and all of the accesses are for processes
with that label (unlikely) the improvement is about 30%.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
This patch separates and audit message that only contains a dentry from
one that contains a full path. This allows us to make it harder to
misuse the interfaces or for the interfaces to be implemented wrong.
Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
The lsm common audit code has wacky contortions making sure which pieces
of information are set based on if it was given a path, dentry, or
inode. Split this into path and inode to get rid of some of the code
complexity.
Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
In the embedded world there are often situations
where libraries are updated from a variety of sources,
for a variety of reasons, and with any number of
security characteristics. These differences
might include privilege required for a given library
provided interface to function properly, as occurs
from time to time in graphics libraries. There are
also cases where it is important to limit use of
libraries based on the provider of the library and
the security aware application may make choices
based on that criteria.
These issues are addressed by providing an additional
Smack label that may optionally be assigned to an object,
the SMACK64MMAP attribute. An mmap operation is allowed
if there is no such attribute.
If there is a SMACK64MMAP attribute the mmap is permitted
only if a subject with that label has all of the access
permitted a subject with the current task label.
Security aware applications may from time to time
wish to reduce their "privilege" to avoid accidental use
of privilege. One case where this arises is the
environment in which multiple sources provide libraries
to perform the same functions. An application may know
that it should eschew services made available from a
particular vendor, or of a particular version.
In support of this a secondary list of Smack rules has
been added that is local to the task. This list is
consulted only in the case where the global list has
approved access. It can only further restrict access.
Unlike the global last, if no entry is found on the
local list access is granted. An application can add
entries to its own list by writing to /smack/load-self.
The changes appear large as they involve refactoring
the list handling to accomodate there being more
than one rule list.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
In a situation where Smack access rules allow processes
with multiple labels to write to a directory it is easy
to get into a situation where the directory gets cluttered
with files that the owner can't deal with because while
they could be written to the directory a process at the
label of the directory can't write them. This is generally
the desired behavior, but when it isn't it is a real
issue.
This patch introduces a new attribute SMACK64TRANSMUTE that
instructs Smack to create the file with the label of the directory
under certain circumstances.
A new access mode, "t" for transmute, is made available to
Smack access rules, which are expanded from "rwxa" to "rwxat".
If a file is created in a directory marked as transmutable
and if access was granted to perform the operation by a rule
that included the transmute mode, then the file gets the
Smack label of the directory instead of the Smack label of the
creating process.
Note that this is equivalent to creating an empty file at the
label of the directory and then having the other process write
to it. The transmute scheme requires that both the access rule
allows transmutation and that the directory be explicitly marked.
Signed-off-by: Jarkko Sakkinen <ext-jarkko.2.sakkinen@nokia.com>
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
SMACK64EXEC. It defines label that is used while task is
running.
Exception: in smack_task_wait() child task is checked
for write access to parent task using label inherited
from the task that forked it.
Fixed issues from previous submit:
- SMACK64EXEC was not read when SMACK64 was not set.
- inode security blob was not updated after setting
SMACK64EXEC
- inode security blob was not updated when removing
SMACK64EXEC
Made the lsm_priv union in include/linux/lsm_audit.h
anonymous.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Liu <tliu@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Moved variable function in include/linux/lsm_audit.h into the
smack_audit_data struct since it is never used outside of it.
Also removed setting of function in the COMMON_AUDIT_DATA_INIT
macro because that variable is now private to SMACK.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Liu <tliu@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
I-dont-see-any-problems-with-it: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
the following patch, add logging of Smack security decisions.
This is of course very useful to understand what your current smack policy does.
As suggested by Casey, it also now forbids labels with ', " or \
It introduces a '/smack/logging' switch :
0: no logging
1: log denied (default)
2: log accepted
3: log denied&accepted
Signed-off-by: Etienne Basset <etienne.basset@numericable.fr>
Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Acked-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
This patch adds a new special option '-CIPSO' to the Smack subsystem. When used
in the netlabel list, it means "use CIPSO networking". A use case is when your
local network speaks CIPSO and you want also to connect to the unlabeled
Internet. This patch also add some documentation describing that. The patch
also corrects an oops when setting a '' SMACK64 xattr to a file.
Signed-off-by: Etienne Basset <etienne.basset@numericable.fr>
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <paul.moore@hp.com>
Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
This patch cleans up a lot of the Smack network access control code. The
largest changes are to fix the labeling of incoming TCP connections in a
manner similar to the recent SELinux changes which use the
security_inet_conn_request() hook to label the request_sock and let the label
move to the child socket via the normal network stack mechanisms. In addition
to the incoming TCP connection fixes this patch also removes the smk_labled
field from the socket_smack struct as the minor optimization advantage was
outweighed by the difficulty in maintaining it's proper state.
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <paul.moore@hp.com>
Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
the following patch (on top of 2.6.29) converts Smack lists to standard linux lists
Please review and consider for inclusion in 2.6.30-rc
regards,
Etienne
Signed-off-by: Etienne Basset <etienne.basset@numericable.fr>
Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Add support for unlabeled network hosts and networks.
Relies heavily on Paul Moore's netlabel support.
Creates a new entry in /smack called netlabel. Writes to /smack/netlabel
take the form:
A.B.C.D LABEL
or
A.B.C.D/N LABEL
where A.B.C.D is a network address, N is an integer between 0-32,
and LABEL is the Smack label to be used. If /N is omitted /32 is
assumed. N designates the netmask for the address. Entries are
matched by the most specific address/mask pair. 0.0.0.0/0 will
match everything, while 192.168.1.117/32 will match exactly one
host.
A new system label "@", pronounced "web", is defined. Processes
can not be assigned the web label. An address assigned the web
label can be written to by any process, and packets coming from
a web address can be written to any socket. Use of the web label
is a violation of any strict MAC policy, but the web label has
been requested many times.
The nltype entry has been removed from /smack. It did not work right
and the netlabel interface can be used to specify that all hosts
be treated as unlabeled.
CIPSO labels on incoming packets will be honored, even from designated
single label hosts. Single label hosts can only be written to by
processes with labels that can write to the label of the host.
Packets sent to single label hosts will always be unlabeled.
Once added a single label designation cannot be removed, however
the label may be changed.
The behavior of the ambient label remains unchanged.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <paul.moore@hp.com>
There have been a number of requests to make the Smack LSM
enforce MAC even in the face of privilege, either capability
based or superuser based. This is not universally desired,
however, so it seems desirable to make it optional. Further,
at least one legacy OS implemented a scheme whereby only
processes running with one particular label could be exempt
from MAC. This patch supports these three cases.
If /smack/onlycap is empty (unset or null-string) privilege
is enforced in the normal way.
If /smack/onlycap contains a label only processes running with
that label may be MAC exempt.
If the label in /smack/onlycap is the star label ("*") the
semantics of the star label combine with the privilege
restrictions to prevent any violations of MAC, even in the
presence of privilege.
Again, this will be independent of the privilege scheme.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Reviewed-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Add the security= boot parameter. This is done to avoid LSM
registration clashes in case of more than one bult-in module.
User can choose a security module to enable at boot. If no
security= boot parameter is specified, only the first LSM
asking for registration will be loaded. An invalid security
module name will be treated as if no module has been chosen.
LSM modules must check now if they are allowed to register
by calling security_module_enable(ops) first. Modify SELinux
and SMACK to do so.
Do not let SMACK register smackfs if it was not chosen on
boot. Smackfs assumes that smack hooks are registered and
the initial task security setup (swapper->security) is done.
Signed-off-by: Ahmed S. Darwish <darwish.07@gmail.com>
Acked-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Smackfs write() implementation does not put a higher bound on the number of
bytes to copy from user-space. This may lead to a DOS attack if a malicious
`count' field is given.
Assure that given `count' is exactly the length needed for a /smack/load rule.
In case of /smack/cipso where the length is relative, assure that `count'
does not exceed the size needed for a buffer representing maximum possible
number of CIPSO 2.2 categories.
Signed-off-by: Ahmed S. Darwish <darwish.07@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Smack is the Simplified Mandatory Access Control Kernel.
Smack implements mandatory access control (MAC) using labels
attached to tasks and data containers, including files, SVIPC,
and other tasks. Smack is a kernel based scheme that requires
an absolute minimum of application support and a very small
amount of configuration data.
Smack uses extended attributes and
provides a set of general mount options, borrowing technics used
elsewhere. Smack uses netlabel for CIPSO labeling. Smack provides
a pseudo-filesystem smackfs that is used for manipulation of
system Smack attributes.
The patch, patches for ls and sshd, a README, a startup script,
and x86 binaries for ls and sshd are also available on
http://www.schaufler-ca.com
Development has been done using Fedora Core 7 in a virtual machine
environment and on an old Sony laptop.
Smack provides mandatory access controls based on the label attached
to a task and the label attached to the object it is attempting to
access. Smack labels are deliberately short (1-23 characters) text
strings. Single character labels using special characters are reserved
for system use. The only operation applied to Smack labels is equality
comparison. No wildcards or expressions, regular or otherwise, are
used. Smack labels are composed of printable characters and may not
include "/".
A file always gets the Smack label of the task that created it.
Smack defines and uses these labels:
"*" - pronounced "star"
"_" - pronounced "floor"
"^" - pronounced "hat"
"?" - pronounced "huh"
The access rules enforced by Smack are, in order:
1. Any access requested by a task labeled "*" is denied.
2. A read or execute access requested by a task labeled "^"
is permitted.
3. A read or execute access requested on an object labeled "_"
is permitted.
4. Any access requested on an object labeled "*" is permitted.
5. Any access requested by a task on an object with the same
label is permitted.
6. Any access requested that is explicitly defined in the loaded
rule set is permitted.
7. Any other access is denied.
Rules may be explicitly defined by writing subject,object,access
triples to /smack/load.
Smack rule sets can be easily defined that describe Bell&LaPadula
sensitivity, Biba integrity, and a variety of interesting
configurations. Smack rule sets can be modified on the fly to
accommodate changes in the operating environment or even the time
of day.
Some practical use cases:
Hierarchical levels. The less common of the two usual uses
for MLS systems is to define hierarchical levels, often
unclassified, confidential, secret, and so on. To set up smack
to support this, these rules could be defined:
C Unclass rx
S C rx
S Unclass rx
TS S rx
TS C rx
TS Unclass rx
A TS process can read S, C, and Unclass data, but cannot write it.
An S process can read C and Unclass. Note that specifying that
TS can read S and S can read C does not imply TS can read C, it
has to be explicitly stated.
Non-hierarchical categories. This is the more common of the
usual uses for an MLS system. Since the default rule is that a
subject cannot access an object with a different label no
access rules are required to implement compartmentalization.
A case that the Bell & LaPadula policy does not allow is demonstrated
with this Smack access rule:
A case that Bell&LaPadula does not allow that Smack does:
ESPN ABC r
ABC ESPN r
On my portable video device I have two applications, one that
shows ABC programming and the other ESPN programming. ESPN wants
to show me sport stories that show up as news, and ABC will
only provide minimal information about a sports story if ESPN
is covering it. Each side can look at the other's info, neither
can change the other. Neither can see what FOX is up to, which
is just as well all things considered.
Another case that I especially like:
SatData Guard w
Guard Publish w
A program running with the Guard label opens a UDP socket and
accepts messages sent by a program running with a SatData label.
The Guard program inspects the message to ensure it is wholesome
and if it is sends it to a program running with the Publish label.
This program then puts the information passed in an appropriate
place. Note that the Guard program cannot write to a Publish
file system object because file system semanitic require read as
well as write.
The four cases (categories, levels, mutual read, guardbox) here
are all quite real, and problems I've been asked to solve over
the years. The first two are easy to do with traditonal MLS systems
while the last two you can't without invoking privilege, at least
for a while.
Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Cc: Joshua Brindle <method@manicmethod.com>
Cc: Paul Moore <paul.moore@hp.com>
Cc: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
Cc: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
Cc: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Cc: "Ahmed S. Darwish" <darwish.07@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrew G. Morgan <morgan@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Lukasz Pawelczyk
Casey Schaufler
Lukasz Pawelczyk
Tomasz Stanislawski
Jarkko Sakkinen
James Morris
Eric Paris
Jarkko Sakkinen
Shan Wei
Jarkko Sakkinen
Mimi Zohar
Thomas Liu
Etienne Basset
Paul Moore
Ahmed S. Darwish