linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] Smack: SMACK

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Date:	Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:01:50 -0400
From:	Eric Paris <eparis@...hat.com>
To:	"Sakkinen, Jarkko" <jarkko.sakkinen@...el.com>
CC:	Eric Paris <eparis@...isplace.org>,
	Casey Schaufler <casey@...aufler-ca.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Smack: SMACK_IOCLOADACCESS

On 08/26/2011 12:05 PM, Sakkinen, Jarkko wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Eric Paris <eparis@...isplace.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:52 AM, Jarkko Sakkinen
>> <jarkko.sakkinen@...el.com> wrote:
>>> IOCTL call for /smack/load that takes access rule in
>>> the same format as they are written into /smack/load.
>>> Sets errno to zero if access is allowed and to EACCES
>>> if not.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko.sakkinen@...el.com>
>>
>> [SELinux maintainer here, but Casey knew to already take what I say
>> with a grain of salt]
>>
>> I'm not telling you to do anything differently, just telling you what
>> SELinux does, and why we do it.  SELinux has a file in selinuxfs
>> called 'access.'  The file can be opened and one can write a rule into
>> the file.  One then calls read and gets back a structure which
>> contains all of the permissions information allowed for the
>> source/target/class.  In SELinux we calculate all of the permissions
>> for the tuple at once so providing all of the information at once can
>> make a lot of sense.  libselinux provides libraries that will cache
>> these decisions in the userspace program and quickly answer the same
>> (or similar) questions later.
>>
>> http://userspace.selinuxproject.org/trac/browser/libselinux/src/compute_av.c
> 
> Thank you for this information. One thing that concerns
> me in this approach is the scenario where things serialize
> to the following sequence:
> 
> - Process A does open()
> - Process B does open()
> - Process A does write()
> - Process B does write()
> - Process A does read()
> - ... (sequence continues)
> 
> What's the end result?

SELinux attaches the information needed to the struct file private area
inside the kernel using the kernel provided fs/libfs.c functions
simple_transation_*.  Which means that 2 processes have no issues
interfering with each other.  A multi threaded or misbehaving
application may get EBUSY on write() if another write()/read() combo is
in progress.  Its nice that the kernel has libraries which solve this
problem for us!

I don't know SMACK internals, but if one ever wants to have SMACK
userspace object managers the ability for the interface to only be able
to return a single value might be an eventual bottleneck.

Like I said, do whatever you guys think is best, but I'm constantly
going to point out and ask for LSM similarities when possible!

-Eric
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