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Documentation: clarify the purpose of LSMs
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Clarify the purpose of the LSM interface with some brief examples and
pointers to additional documentation.

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
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Kees Cook authored and James Morris committed Nov 16, 2011
1 parent 1933ca8 commit e163bc8
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2 changes: 2 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/security/00-INDEX
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00-INDEX
- this file.
LSM.txt
- description of the Linux Security Module framework.
SELinux.txt
- how to get started with the SELinux security enhancement.
Smack.txt
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34 changes: 34 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/security/LSM.txt
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Linux Security Module framework
-------------------------------

The Linux Security Module (LSM) framework provides a mechanism for
various security checks to be hooked by new kernel extensions. The name
"module" is a bit of a misnomer since these extensions are not actually
loadable kernel modules. Instead, they are selectable at build-time via
CONFIG_DEFAULT_SECURITY and can be overridden at boot-time via the
"security=..." kernel command line argument, in the case where multiple
LSMs were built into a given kernel.

The primary users of the LSM interface are Mandatory Access Control
(MAC) extensions which provide a comprehensive security policy. Examples
include SELinux, Smack, Tomoyo, and AppArmor. In addition to the larger
MAC extensions, other extensions can be built using the LSM to provide
specific changes to system operation when these tweaks are not available
in the core functionality of Linux itself.

Without a specific LSM built into the kernel, the default LSM will be the
Linux capabilities system. Most LSMs choose to extend the capabilities
system, building their checks on top of the defined capability hooks.
For more details on capabilities, see capabilities(7) in the Linux
man-pages project.

Based on http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Documenting_Security_Module_Intent,
a new LSM is accepted into the kernel when its intent (a description of
what it tries to protect against and in what cases one would expect to
use it) has been appropriately documented in Documentation/security/.
This allows an LSM's code to be easily compared to its goals, and so
that end users and distros can make a more informed decision about which
LSMs suit their requirements.

For extensive documentation on the available LSM hook interfaces, please
see include/linux/security.h.
6 changes: 3 additions & 3 deletions Documentation/security/credentials.txt
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Expand Up @@ -221,10 +221,10 @@ The Linux kernel supports the following types of credentials:
(5) LSM

The Linux Security Module allows extra controls to be placed over the
operations that a task may do. Currently Linux supports two main
alternate LSM options: SELinux and Smack.
operations that a task may do. Currently Linux supports several LSM
options.

Both work by labelling the objects in a system and then applying sets of
Some work by labelling the objects in a system and then applying sets of
rules (policies) that say what operations a task with one label may do to
an object with another label.

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