Re: [PATCH] Version 3 (2.6.23-rc8) Smack: Simplified Mandatory Access Control Kernel

Joshua Brindle
2007-09-30T17:46:18Z

Andi Kleen wrote:
>> - hm, netlabels. Who might be a suitable person to review that code?
>> Seems that Paul Moore is the man. Maybe he'd be interested in taking a
>> look over it (please?)
>>
>
> I personally consider these IP options it uses to be pretty useless. Who could
> ever use that without cryptographic authentication? Clearly when they
> were designed in the original IP spec long ago the designers didn't understand
> network security very well because the whole field was at its infancy. And
> CIPSO doesn't solve any of these fundamental issues.
>
> It assumes a trusted network which is a very dangerous assumption. I don't
> think that was in the original patch I looked at, I surely would have
> objected to it.
>
> Perhaps take the network part out? I guess SMACK would be useful
> locally even without questionable network support.
>

CIPSO is supported on SELinux as well. It certainly has uses where IPSec
is excessive. One example is someone I talked to recently that basically
has a set of blade systems connected with a high speed backplane that
looks like a network interface. CIPSO is useful in this case because
they can't afford the overhead of IPSec but need to transfer the level
of the connection to the other machines. The backplane is a trusted
network and that isn't a dangerous assumption in this case.

CIPSO also lets systems like SELinux and SMACK talk to other trusted
systems (eg., trusted solaris) in a way they understand. I don't
regularly support CIPSO as I believe IPSec labeling is more useful in
more situations but that doesn't mean CIPSO is never useful.