Re: Multiple contexts

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 09:00:49AM -0500, Stephen Smalley wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 16:48, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> >  recursion was added to ACLs - or "inheritance" - because to fix access
> >  to subdirectories and all contents you are required in NT 4.0 to change
> >  ALL permissions on ALL subdirectories and contents!
> > 
> >  basically you now have to traverse the directory tree right
> >  up to the mount point [as stephen says] in order to determine access
> >  rights, combining and checking permissions as you go.
> > 
> >  eeuuuw.
> > 
> >  ... was that what you were referring to stephen?
> 
> No.  I'm simply referring to the fact that if your policy is encoded in
> the file attributes themselves, as with ACLs, then you cannot analyze
> the potential information flow among security equivalence classes in the
> system (which is necessary if you want to ensure confidentiality or
> integrity guarantees) without looking at all of the file attributes. 

 ... how about encoding the file attributes in the policy files,
 such that they are ACL-like?

 [i realise this is quite a radical change under-the-hood]

 if nothing else by having the means to apply a list of contexts
 [any of which may apply] to a file.

 the ultimate aim of which would be to make it easier for
 administrators to add permissions and programs without going
 through a complete policy rebuild / reload.


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