From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from facesaver.epoch.ncsc.mil (facesaver [144.51.25.10]) by tarius.tycho.ncsc.mil (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id m5J0KT7o014329 for ; Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:20:29 -0400 Message-ID: <4859A64C.7050705@tycho.nsa.gov> Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:20:28 -0400 From: Eamon Walsh MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Xavier Toth CC: SELinux List Subject: Re: window manager policy References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Sender: owner-selinux@tycho.nsa.gov List-Id: selinux@tycho.nsa.gov Xavier Toth wrote: > I'm contemplating some AVC's that originate in metacity and am > wondering whether a window manager is a special case of an X client > that requires its' own policy. Are there things that a window manager > does that other X clients shouldn't? Also on an MLS system should the > window manager run at the users highwater mark or ranged? > The window manager basically needs the full run of the display. When another application creates a window, the window manager creates a second window with the titlebar and borders, and then plops the application window down inside of it (reparents it). It also moves windows around and resizes them, sets properties on them (such as the _NET_WM_DESKTOP property that contains the desktop number) and listens for events so it can tell when to change the focus window. Finally, a compositing manager actually needs to read the window contents. It's definitely a special-case app that's going to need its own policy. It almost certainly needs permissions on all windows that map to both read and write in the MLS configuration. So it will need read- and write-all-levels. -- Eamon Walsh National Security Agency -- This message was distributed to subscribers of the selinux mailing list. If you no longer wish to subscribe, send mail to majordomo@tycho.nsa.gov with the words "unsubscribe selinux" without quotes as the message.