Re: [AppArmor 39/45] AppArmor: Profile loading and manipulation,pathname matching

From: Greg KH
Date: Wed Jun 06 2007 - 13:33:21 EST


On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 09:26:26AM -0400, Stephen Smalley wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-06-04 at 23:03 +0200, Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:
> > On Tuesday 15 May 2007 11:20, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > > Hi!
> > >
> > > > Pathname matching, transition table loading, profile loading and
> > > > manipulation.
> > >
> > > So we get small interpretter of state machines, and reason we need is
> > > is 'apparmor is misdesigned and works with paths when it should have
> > > worked with handles'.
> >
> > I assume you mean labels instead of handles.
> >
> > AppArmor's design is around paths not labels, and independent of whether or
> > not you like AppArmor, this design leads to a useful security model distinct
> > from the SELinux security model (which is useful in its own ways). The
> > differences between those models cannot be argued away, neither is a subset
> > of the other, and neither is a misdesign. I would be thankful if you could
> > stop spreading this lie.
>
> I have a hard time distinguishing AppArmor's "model" from its
> implementation; every time we suggest that one might emulate much of
> AppArmor's functionality on SELinux (as in SEEdit), someone points to a
> specific characteristic of the AppArmor implementation that cannot be
> emulated in this manner. But is that implementation characteristic an
> actual requirement or just how it happens to have been done to date in
> AA? And I get the impression that even if we extended SELinux in
> certain ways to ease such emulation, the AA folks would never be
> satisfied because the implementation would still differ. Can we
> separate the desired functionality and actual requirements from the
> implementation specifics?

That's a really good point, is there a description of the AA "model"
anywhere that we could see to determine if there really is a way to
possibly use the current SELinux internals to show this model to the
user?

thanks,

greg k-h
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