From: Crispin Cowan Subject: Re: [AppArmor 39/45] AppArmor: Profile loading and manipulation, pathname matching Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:17:37 -0600 Message-ID: <467B4D61.3020509@novell.com> References: <20070615200623.GA2616@elf.ucw.cz> <20070615211157.GB7337@kroah.com> <46732124.80509@novell.com> <20070616000251.GG2616@elf.ucw.cz> <20070621160840.GA20105@marowsky-bree.de> <20070621183311.GC18990@elf.ucw.cz> <20070621192407.GF20105@marowsky-bree.de> <20070621195400.GK20105@marowsky-bree.de> <1182459594.20464.16.camel@moss-spartans.epoch.ncsc.mil> <20070622003436.GB6222@think.oraclecorp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Chris Mason , Stephen Smalley , Lars Marowsky-Bree , Pavel Machek , Greg KH , Andreas Gruenbacher , jjohansen@suse.de, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org To: James Morris Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-security-module-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org 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? Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://crispincowan.com/~crispin/ Director of Software Engineering http://novell.com AppArmor Chat: irc.oftc.net/#apparmor