Re: [RESEND][RFC][PATCH 2/7] implementation of LSM hooks

James Morris
2006-04-18T21:36:56Z

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Crispin Cowan wrote:

> SELinux has NSA legacy, and that is reflected in their inode design: it
> is much better at protecting secrecy, which is the NSA's historic
> mission.

No. The inode design is simply correct.

Consider the following:

What if Unix DAC security was implemented via pathnames, using a
configuration file and regexp matching enginer in the kernel, invoked
during file access, rather than the existing scheme of checking inode
ownership and permission attributes?

SELinux labels objects directly because it's the right thing to do.

To also clarify: the legacy of SELinux is in the decades of research
performed into providing more comprehensive security than the original
secrecy-oriented TCSEC schemes. And conflating a highly loaded term such
as "NSA's historic mission" with an implementation specific aspect of
SELinux is useless in a technical discussion and IMHO totally
inappropriate.

- James
--
James Morris
<jmorris@namei.org>