NAI Labs releases LOMAC, a kernel security extension

Tim Fraser writes "NAI Labs has released a new version of the Linux LOMAC kernel extension , their latest in a series of security extension products they're involved with -- ranging from components of TrustedBSD to SELinux. LOMAC provides a drop-in security solution that does not require extensive administration unlike other kinds of Mandatory Access control (MAC). There's a port of LOMAC to FreeBSD in the works. The release announcement has more details.

Comments

Re:Too good to be true?

[Lord of the Files]

The author gave a talk at our lug last week. This is my understanding of what he said.

Basically LOMAC's goal is to increase security without being intrusive. (Intrusive systems are hard to get people to use). It doesn't protect against everything, or even close to everything. It does make a class of actions which should basically never be done impossible.

It divides the fs into level 1 and level 2 parts. Level 2 stuff is things like /etc, /usr, and anything else only root should be mucking with. Level 1 is everything else. Programs begin running at level 2, and are demoted to level 1 as soon as they read a level 1 file (or from the network which is considered level 1).

This keeps someone who compromised your copy of bind running as root from reconfiguring your system. It doesn't stop them from trashing your www data, or anything else going on at level 1.

i.e. it eliminates a certain class of problems.

As to it being drop in, it's a kernel module. What is level 1 vs. level 2 in the file system is defined at compile time. There is _no_ configuration, which makes it very easy to use.