Re: AppArmor FAQ

David Lang
2007-04-20T19:19:15Z

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Stephen Smalley wrote:

> already happened to integrate such support into userland.
>
> To look at it in a slightly different way, the AA emphasis on not
> modifying applications could be viewed as a limitation. Ultimately,
> users have security goals that go beyond just what the OS can directly
> enforce and at least some applications (notably things like X, D-BUS,
> PostgreSQL, etc) need to likewise support strong domain separation and
> controlled information flow through their own internal objects and
> operations. SELinux provides APIs and infrastructure for such
> applications, and has already done quite a bit of work in that space
> (D-BUS support, XACE/XSELinux, SE-PostgreSQL), whereas AA seems to have
> no interest in going there (and would have to recant its emphasis on no
> application mods to do so). If you actually want to truly confine a
> desktop application, you can't limit yourself to the kernel. And the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> label model provides a unifying abstraction for dealing with all of
> these various objects, whereas the path/"natural abstraction" model has
> no unifying abstraction at all.

AA isn't aimed at confineing desktop applications. it's aimed at confining
server applications. this really is a easier task (if it happens to be useful
for some desktop apps as well, so much the better)

David Lang