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James Morris
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Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in the "James Morris" journal:
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09:35 am
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Labeled NFS Requirements Draft Submitted
Dave Quigley has just submitted an Internet Draft to the IETF outlining the requirements for Labeled NFS:
MAC Security Label Requirements for NFSv4 (link)
Abstract
This Internet-Draft outlines high-level requirements for the
integration of flexible Mandatory Access Control (MAC) functionality
into NFSv4.1 . It describes the level of protections that should be
provided over protocol components and the basic structure of the
proposed system. It also gives a brief explanation of what kinds of
protections MAC systems offer and why existing NFSv4 protection
mechanisms are not sufficient.
This draft is a generalization the original Security Enhanced NFS document posted last year, addressing the general need for mandatory access control support in NFS.
NFSv4 currently supports two access control schemes: standard DAC and ACLs. MAC labeling support is required for technologies such as SELinux and OpenSolaris FMAC.
Essentially what's needed is a way to convey MAC labels over the wire (for both setting and retrieving their values), and to be able to enforce security policy using those labels. The server needs to be able to determine the security label of the remote client process when enforcing policy, and all systems need to be able to ensure they understand each other's labels, or be able to translate them. A "Domain of Interpretation" (DOI) attribute is used to determine the meaning of labels, a term which may be familiar to those who've braved the IPsec specifications. The confidentiality and integrity of these security attributes must be protected in transit, while all parties need to be authenticated. We also need to be able to handle the case where either the client or server does not have MAC enabled, and to ensure non-breakage with existing implementations. There's a lot more in the details, but that's the gist of it.
It may seem at first glance that NFSv4 named attributes (NAs) would provide the required labeling functionality, but they're not a good fit. NAs are specifed as opaque to the system and user-managed, while MAC security labels are managed by the system. NAs also do not provide necessary semantics such as conveying client security attributes or negotiation of DOI. There are also issues with attribute namespaces (which are user-managed and unspecified) and labeling atomicity. Another possible approach is to implement Linux/BSD-style extended attributes (EAs), which are simple text string attributes associated with files, in contrast with the NA "subfile" scheme. This would potentially only solve the attribute namespace issue, and is also not a good general solution. EAs are also not currently part of the NFSv4 specification, and it seems like a contentious area in any case.
The current Labeled NFS prototype code utilizes NFSv4 recommended attributes (RAs), which are fully extensible, already exist, and are already used for similar management of metadata (e.g. ACLs). This seems to be the simplest and most straightforward approach.
Once there's consensus on the requirements, the next step will be to develop a protocol specification and hopefully have it incorporated into NFSv4. v4.1 is currently in "last call", so the next candidate would be v4.2, it seems. The prototype code for Linux/SELinux will continue to be developed alongside the standards process.
For those interested in following or contributing to the project, there are several relevant mailing lists:
Dave is hoping to have further discussion IETF 72 in July, and will be presenting on the state of the project at the SELinux Developer Summit ahead of that.
Tags: developers, flask, fmac, foss, ietf, kernel, labeled nfs, linux, mac, mandatory access control, opensolaris, security, selinux, type enforcement
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11:09 am
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2008 SELinux Developer Summit Schedule Now Up
We managed to get the SELinux developer summit schedule published a few days early. Hopefully, this will help people who are making travel arrangements to OLS.
As mentioned, a lot of high quality proposals were submitted. To ensure that all important topics can be covered, the format of the summit has been changed to moderated discussion panels with presentations; rather than the original plan of having a set of fixed-length presentations followed by discussion panels.
Presentations will now be 10-20 minutes, with a greater focus on discussion. This provides much more flexibility, and is derived somewhat from experience with the kernel networking summit, which has been very successful with short presentations driving discussions.
The panel sessions are as follows:
- Community
- Applications
- Desktop
- Distributed Technologies
- Policy Configuration
- Policy Infrastructure
- Emerging Technology/Works in Progress
More detailed information, including topics, issues, and links to abstracts may be found at the schedule page. Also see the printable version and the topics page.
All SELinux developers and folk with a technical interest in SELinux and related technologies are welcome to attend. Don't forget that you also need to be registered to attend OLS.
Tags: developers, events, flask, fmac, foss, linux, mandatory access control, ols, opensolaris, ottawa, security, selinux, type enforcement
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09:07 pm
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SELinux Developer Summit: CFP closed
The 2008 SELinux Developer Summit CFP is now closed.
As suspected, most of the proposals arrived at the last possible moment. It looks like we have more proposals than can reasonably fit in one day, so the organizing team now has the interesting task of squeezing as much in as possible without overloading the schedule. This is going to be very difficult, as pretty much all of the submissions are of excellent quality.
In any case, we should have the schedule finalized and published within a week or so.
Tags: developers, events, flask, fmac, foss, linux, ols, opensolaris, ottawa, security, selinux, type enforcement
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10:54 am
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SELinux Developer Summit 2008 Announced
We've just announced the SELinux Developer Summit for 2008, which will be held in Ottawa (as an OLS mini-summit) on July 22nd. A CfP will be issued early next week, where we'll be looking for people to submit talks and panel topics.
In previous years, the project has had the SELinux Symposium, generously run by Tresys, with an invite-only developer summit tacked onto the end.
The new Developer Summit is intended to track with the evolution of SELinux as a wider community project, and we are very pleased to be able to hold an open event this year in conjunction with OLS.
All developers and folk with a strong technical interest in SELinux and related Flask/TE projects are encouraged to attend. Note that attendees need to also be registered for OLS.
There'll be more information on the CfP and schedule soon -- this is something of a heads up for those planning travel and who may be wish to start thinking about presentation and discussion topics.
The organizing team is as follows:
- Serge Hallyn (IBM)
- Paul Moore (HP)
- James Morris (Red Hat)
- Chad Sellers (Tresys)
- Stephen Smalley (NSA)
For more details on the event, including contact details for the team refer to the SELinux Developer Summit page.
So, there'll be quite a lot of SELinux content at OLS, some of which I've previously mentioned. To summarize, in addition to the Developer Summit, there'll be:
Talks:
A tutorial:
A BoF session:
So, if you're involved with SELinux or otherwise interested in it, I'd suggest flying, driving, walking or swimming (I'm pretty sure this is possible) to Ottawa this July.
Tags: developers, events, flask, fmac, linux, mac, mandatory access control, ols, opensolaris, ottawa, security, selinux, type enforcement
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09:02 am
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OpenSolaris to adopt Flask/TE security scheme
As noted at SELinux News, OpenSolaris has launched a new project, Flexible Mandatory Access Control (FMAC), to integrate the Flask/TE security scheme into their OS. This is the same underlying model implemented by SELinux, and follows other cross-platform Flask/TE integration projects such as SEDarwin and SEBSD.
This is very exciting in terms of of establishing compatible security across operating systems, particularly for Mandatory Access Control, which has traditionally been narrowly focused and generally incompatible. With FMAC, we're closer to seeing truly ubiquitous, cross-platform MAC security.
I'll be interested to see how they approach the integration, with the opportunity to learn lessons from the SELinux experience.
It'll also be great to have an expanded TE/Flask community. According to their project page, areas of work include improving usability (we can never have enough of that), desktop integration via XACE, integration with Xen (presumably via XSM), Labeled NFS, and Labeled IPSec. It seems they already have a separate project for the latter, txipsec.
I'll be watching with great interest, and would like to offer any assistance in ensuring interoperability with SELinux.
Tags: flask, fmac, mac, mandatory access control, opensolaris, selinux, type enforcement
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08:58 am
[Link] |
The Linux Foundation does not speak for me
I'd like to say, somewhat for the sake of the OpenSolaris folk who are currently having a bit of a rough time, that I personally strongly disagree with certain statements coming out of the Linux Foundation, such as those claiming that the "L in LAMP is literal". [1]
Of course, LAMP has long been representative of the concept of a free software stack. The term itself has been tremendously useful as a means to identify an open approach to developing and deploying systems. The L does of course not have to mean Linux any more than the P needs to mean PHP or Perl. Aside from OpenSolaris, there are many good choices for operating systems in an open stack, such as OpenBSD.
While LF is an industry consortium representing several companies and organizations with various interests in Linux, it certainly does not generally represent the Linux community.
As a Linux developer, I'd like to continue to extend support and encouragement to OpenSolaris developers.
I believe that such attacks on other open projects serve to damage the general interests of FOSS. Interestingly, LF has granted itself authority to respond to "competitors’ attacks" [2], a role which is surely undermined by themselves undertaking such attacks, especially on emerging FOSS projects.
References:
[1] http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/amanda/2008/02/17/hey-jonathan-the-l-in-lamp-is-literal/
[2] http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/About
Tags: foss, fud, lamp, linux, linux foundation, opensolaris
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