On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 22:17 -0600, Crispin Cowan wrote: > James Morris wrote: > > On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Chris Mason wrote: > >>> The incomplete mediation flows from the design, since the pathname-based > >>> mediation doesn't generalize to cover all objects unlike label- or > >>> attribute-based mediation. And the "use the natural abstraction for > >>> each object type" approach likewise doesn't yield any general model or > >>> anything that you can analyze systematically for data flow. > >>> > >> This feels quite a lot like a repeat of the discussion at the kernel > >> summit. There are valid uses for path based security, and if they don't > >> fit your needs, please don't use them. But, path based semantics alone > >> are not a valid reason to shut out AA. > >> > > The validity or otherwise of pathname access control is not being > > discussed here. > > > > The point is that the pathname model does not generalize, and that > > AppArmor's inability to provide adequate coverage of the system is a > > design issue arising from this. > > > The above two paragraphs appear to contradict each other. > > > Recall that the question asked by Lars was whether there were any > > outstanding technical issues relating to AppArmor. > > > > AppArmor does not and can not provide the level of confinement claimed by > > the documentation, and its policy does not reflect its actual confinement > > properties. That's kind of a technical issue, right? > > > So if the document said "confinement with respect to direct file access > and POSIX.1e capabilities" and that list got extended as AA got new > confinement features, would that address your issue? That would certainly help, although one might quibble with the use of the word "confinement" at all wrt AppArmor (it has a long-established technical meaning that implies information flow control, and that goes beyond even complete mediation - it requires global and persistent protection of the data based on its properties, which requires stable and unambiguous identifiers). -- Stephen Smalley National Security Agency - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
