Re: [PATCH 9/9] Protect SELinux initialized state with pmalloc

From: Igor Stoppa
Date: Tue Apr 24 2018 - 10:35:33 EST




On 24/04/18 16:49, Stephen Smalley wrote:
On 04/23/2018 08:54 AM, Igor Stoppa wrote:

[...]

The patch is probably in need of rework, to make it fit better with the
new SELinux internal data structures, however it shows how to deny an
easy target to the attacker.

I know this is just an example, but not sure why you wouldn't just protect the
entire selinux_state.

Because I have much more to discuss about SELinux, which would involve the whole state, the policyDB and the AVC

I will start a separate thread about that. This was merely as simple as possible example of the use of the API.

I just wanted to have a feeling about how it would be received :-)

Note btw that the selinux_state encapsulation is preparatory work
for selinux namespaces [1], at which point the structure is in fact dynamically allocated
and there can be multiple instances of it. That however is work-in-progress, highly experimental,
and might not ever make it upstream (if we can't resolve the various challenges it poses in a satisfactory
way).

Yes, I am aware of this and I would like to discuss also in the light of the future directions.

I just didn't want to waste too much time on something that you might want to change radically in a month :-)

I already was caught once by surprise when ss_initalized disappeared just when I had a patch ready for it :-)

--
igor