Runtime flexibility of SELInux

Tim Sheppard tsheppard at taz.qinetiq.com
Tue Apr 24 17:16:47 UTC 2012


Hi,

I am looking to use SELinux to secure a process that is made up of a 
number of discrete, sequential stages. One stage communicates to the 
next by writing results to a file and then an external process modifies 
the SELinux context of the file to allow the next stage to read the file 
and so on until the final stage is reached and the processing stops.

The problem I have is that the number of stages is variable and can 
change with each invocation of the process, i.e. when I create the 
process I know the number of stages that will be required in it, but the 
number of stages could change with each invocation. I think therefore, 
that I need a means of creating new contexts on the fly and assigning 
them to the processes. Is it possible with SELinux to create a new 
security context (domain for the output file, and user/role for the 
stage process) on the fly and execute a process within that context such 
that it could poll a directory for input files and, if it is permitted 
to read the file perform its operation?

Many Thanks,

Tim Sheppard





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