On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 10:42 -0500, alex(a)milivojevic.org wrote:
Sorry, it wasn't my intention to blame the messanger. All I
wanted to
say (and
as usually badly expressing myself) was that making system secure is a complex
task. Simply having SELinux enabled on the system does not make the system
ultimately secure. Making changes to default policies without fully
understanding what the changes will introduce just makes it even less secure.
Example: On several Linux-end-users type of lists I already saw posters with
good intentions giving advice to include this or that rules into the policy to
solve various problems, just to have other people screeming in replies that
those including such rules into their policy could just as well disable
SELinux
completely with about the same effects.
If somebody Googles around to find solution to the specific problem and finds
advice to do "chmod -R a+rw /", (s)he is not likely to actually do it. On the
other hand, there is many more people that will include some random set of
rules into their SELinux policy, giving application(s) way more access then
they really need. Nothing to do with SELinux as such, and it would be
wrong to
blame it. But rather with human nature (which is the weakest link of any
security system).
Yes, understood. And as I say, there is ongoing work to make (correct)
policy configuration much more accessible to typical end users.
--
Stephen Smalley
National Security Agency