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From: Matt Jezorek <mjezorek_at_usa.net>
subject: Re: [Re: selinux included in new distro]
Date: 22 Jun 2001 14:41:31 EDT
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Thank you for all the information. I wanted to make sure that there were no underlying peices involved that might have been Questionable GPL plus I like contacting the development team/creators to make sure that there is no objection or anything to watch out for.

Matt Jezorek
mjezorek@usa.net
http://bluelinux.sourceforge.net

P.S. anyone successfully patched selinux with XFS?

Stephen Smalley <sds@tislabs.com> wrote:
>
> On 22 Jun 2001, Matt Jezorek wrote:
>
> > Basics under current selinux licensing i can use selinux as the
> > base for a new distro correct provided I leave the copyright and
info
> > and supply source (naturally) of any changes and so on...Is this
> > statement correct?
>
> You are free to use SELinux as part of a Linux distribution under
> the same conditions as any other GPL'd software. All of the
SELinux
> software is licensed under the GPL, including both the patches to
> existing GPL'd software (obviously and necessarily) and the newly
> developed components.
>
> --
> Stephen D. Smalley, NAI Labs
> ssmalley@nai.com
>
>
>
>

Matt Jezorek
P.O. Box 1436
Hillsborough, NC 27278
919-643-2801

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From: Stephen Smalley <sds_at_tislabs.com>
subject: Re: [Re: selinux included in new distro]
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 16:15:23 -0400 (EDT)
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On 22 Jun 2001, Matt Jezorek wrote:

> P.S. anyone successfully patched selinux with XFS?

The SELinux kernel patch only provides file labeling support for ext2 file systems. To use the SELinux kernel patch with XFS (or any other file system type other than ext2), you would need to implement support for binding persistent security identifiers (PSIDs) to files in that file system type. Otherwise, your files won't be labeled with security information. With ext2, we used a spare field in the on-disk inode to store the PSID - see our changes to the files under slinux/kernel-2.4/fs/ext2. Using a spare field in the existing on-disk inode avoids the need to maintain a separate on-disk mapping between inodes and PSIDs. With XFS, you would probably implement equivalent support using extended attributes. Our expectation was that the persistent label mapping would ultimately be replaced by extended attributes if/when extended attributes become part of the mainstream Linux kernel.

The new LSM-based SELinux loadable kernel module uses a different approach than the SELinux kernel patch since LSM does not provide us with access to the on-disk inode. It maintains a separate on-disk mapping between inodes and PSIDs, costing us in performance but providing more general support for a variety of file systems. We also used this same approach in the predecessor of SELinux, the Flask prototype. This support could also be integrated into the SELinux kernel patch.

--
Stephen D. Smalley, NAI Labs
ssmalley@nai.com





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From: Darrell McGuire <dmcguire_at_pegasys.cc>
subject: SELinux with acl.bestbits.at ext2fs patch
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 09:45:21 -0700
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Have any of you attempted a dual patch of both the POSIX ACL patch from Andreas Gruenbacher (acl.bestbits.at) and SELinux?

Second question, as a follow up, does the dev. team for SELinux few this technology as a way to help harden a firewall, or as more of a general purpose OS security tool?

Thank you for your time,

   Darrell McGuire

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From: Stephen Smalley <sds_at_tislabs.com>
subject: Re: SELinux with acl.bestbits.at ext2fs patch
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 10:54:41 -0400 (EDT)
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On Sat, 23 Jun 2001, Darrell McGuire wrote:

> Have any of you attempted a dual patch of both the POSIX ACL patch
> from Andreas Gruenbacher (acl.bestbits.at) and SELinux?

We have not. SELinux currently provides its own support for binding security attributes to files. If support for extended attributes were integrated into the mainstream kernel, then we would naturally investigate using that support instead.

> Second question, as a follow up, does the dev. team for SELinux
> few this technology as a way to help harden a firewall, or as more
> of a general purpose OS security tool?

You can configure the SELinux access controls to meet a variety of needs. So you can use SELinux to harden a firewall or a web/mail/DNS server. You can also use SELinux on client systems to protect users against malicious code. However, it will naturally be easier to configure the security policy for firewalls and dedicated server systems than for client systems.

--
Stephen D. Smalley, NAI Labs
ssmalley@nai.com




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