Documentation/security/lsm.rst

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========================================================
Linux Security Modules: General Security Hooks for Linux
========================================================

:Author: Stephen Smalley
:Author: Timothy Fraser
:Author: Chris Vance

.. note::

   The APIs described in this book are outdated.

Introduction
============

In March 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) gave a presentation
about Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) at the 2.5 Linux Kernel Summit.
SELinux is an implementation of flexible and fine-grained
nondiscretionary access controls in the Linux kernel, originally
implemented as its own particular kernel patch. Several other security
projects (e.g. RSBAC, Medusa) have also developed flexible access
control architectures for the Linux kernel, and various projects have
developed particular access control models for Linux (e.g. LIDS, DTE,
SubDomain). Each project has developed and maintained its own kernel
patch to support its security needs.

In response to the NSA presentation, Linus Torvalds made a set of
remarks that described a security framework he would be willing to
consider for inclusion in the mainstream Linux kernel. He described a
general framework that would provide a set of security hooks to control
operations on kernel objects and a set of opaque security fields in
kernel data structures for maintaining security attributes. This
framework could then be used by loadable kernel modules to implement any
desired model of security. Linus also suggested the possibility of
migrating the Linux capabilities code into such a module.

The Linux Security Modules (LSM) project was started by WireX to develop
such a framework. LSM was a joint development effort by several security
projects, including Immunix, SELinux, SGI and Janus, and several
individuals, including Greg Kroah-Hartman and James Morris, to develop a
Linux kernel patch that implements this framework. The work was
incorporated in the mainstream in December of 2003. This technical
report provides an overview of the framework and the capabilities
security module.

LSM Framework
=============

The LSM framework provides a general kernel framework to support
security modules. In particular, the LSM framework is primarily focused
on supporting access control modules, although future development is
likely to address other security needs such as sandboxing. By itself, the
framework does not provide any additional security; it merely provides
the infrastructure to support security modules. The LSM framework is
optional, requiring `CONFIG_SECURITY` to be enabled. The capabilities
logic is implemented as a security module.
This capabilities module is discussed further in
`LSM Capabilities Module`_.

The LSM framework includes security fields in kernel data structures and
calls to hook functions at critical points in the kernel code to
manage the security fields and to perform access control.
It also adds functions for registering security modules.
An interface `/sys/kernel/security/lsm` reports a comma separated list
of security modules that are active on the system.

The LSM security fields are simply ``void*`` pointers.
The data is referred to as a blob, which may be managed by
the framework or by the individual security modules that use it.
Security blobs that are used by more than one security module are

Annotation

Implementation Notes