[colug-432] SELinux == Sadness

Joshua Kramer josh at globalherald.net
Sun Apr 25 17:04:36 EDT 2010


> If only it were possible to test everything under all conditions (if
> only P did equal NP).  Really, though, it's actually more indicative

Actually, as RHEL 5 and 6 are configured in their 'Enforcing' mode, you 
only need to test for interaction with the outside world.  If your 
application only ever opens one file and connects to one server, those 
will be the two 'pain points' with SELinux.  You would need to test cases 
where the file is created, opened, read from, written to, and closed; 
likewise with the network socket.

Here's an article I wrote a while back about how you can secure a website 
with SELinux.  It also demonstrates what happens when a violation occurs.

http://www.packtpub.com/article/selinux-secured-web-hosting-python-based-web-applications

I may revisit the article and consider mod_selinux:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-May/msg01395.html

mod_selinux is one of the reasons I've been awating the arrival of RHEL6. 
Basically, with mod_selinux, you can have each separate website running 
under its own security context... it's expensive in terms of performance, 
because each request fires off a new Apache thread, but the security 
simply can't be beat... by anything!

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