Re: [gentoo-hardened] SELinux policy rules principles?

[Sven Vermeulen]

On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 11:06:47AM -0600, Chris Richards wrote:
> My general feeling is that the system should operate FROM THE USER
> PERSPECTIVE the way it always does, i.e. the existence of SELinux should
> be relatively transparent to the user and/or administrator, at least to
> the extent that is practical.  There may be some things that you simply
> can't avoid changing, but they should generally be few and far between.

So you want the application to function properly and that the logs have no
"cosmetic" AVC denials (fine - fully agree here). One thing that I can't 
gather from this is
- do you want to dontaudit the AVC denials which apparently have no impact
  on functionality, or
- do you want to allow the AVC denials even though they have no impact on
  functionality

I personally don't mind having Gentoo Hardened pick the latter (we use
SELinux to confine applications in the manner that no denial should ever be
triggered as long as the application doesn't go beyond what it is programmed
to do). Even though it might not be within the principle of "least
privilege" (only allow what it needs), at least it gives the SELinux policy
developer a clearer scope of his tasks.

The problem with the first approach is that other users have a higher
likelihood of having a malfunctioning system than with the last (what the
developer sees as cosmetic might be important on other systems). 

Wkr,
	Sven Vermeulen