Re: AppArmor FAQ

[David Lang <david.lang@digitalinsight.com>]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Stephen Smalley wrote:

> already happened to integrate such support into userland.
>
> To look at it in a slightly different way, the AA emphasis on not
> modifying applications could be viewed as a limitation.  Ultimately,
> users have security goals that go beyond just what the OS can directly
> enforce and at least some applications (notably things like X, D-BUS,
> PostgreSQL, etc) need to likewise support strong domain separation and
> controlled information flow through their own internal objects and
> operations.  SELinux provides APIs and infrastructure for such
> applications, and has already done quite a bit of work in that space
> (D-BUS support, XACE/XSELinux, SE-PostgreSQL), whereas AA seems to have
> no interest in going there (and would have to recant its emphasis on no
> application mods to do so).  If you actually want to truly confine a
> desktop application, you can't limit yourself to the kernel.  And the
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> label model provides a unifying abstraction for dealing with all of
> these various objects, whereas the path/"natural abstraction" model has
> no unifying abstraction at all.


AA isn't aimed at confineing desktop applications. it's aimed at confining 
server applications. this really is a easier task (if it happens to be useful 
for some desktop apps as well, so much the better)

David Lang
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/