Mandatory Access Control (MAC) with SELinux

Conclusions

SELinux is a vey useful security extension. Once it is activated, SELinux runs more or less transparently in the background, monitoring the running system – as long as the distributor has paved the way by providing a policy worthy of that title. As of this writing, Fedora is the leading distribution in this respect.

Recent releases have improved the usability of SELinux; for example, the SELinux logs are easier to read than before with the setroubleshootd tool. Even inexperienced users can develop their own policy modules to place new programs under the protective shield of SELinux, with a little help from the graphical front end, system-config-selinux.

Infos

  1. NSA SELinux website: http://www.nsa.gov/selinux
  2. Reussell Coker's SELinux Debian play machines: http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/play.html
  3. Dan Walsh, Creating a Kiosk Account: http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/13376
  4. "A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a New Policy Module", by Dan Walsh, Red Hat Magazine, August 2007: http://redhatmagazine.com/2007/08/21/a-step-by-step-guide-to-building-a-new-selinux-policy-module.html

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