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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/index.rst | 31 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/index.rst | 1 |
2 files changed, 32 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/index.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/index.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..7e892b9b58aa --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/index.rst @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +=========================== +Linux Security Module Usage +=========================== + +The Linux Security Module (LSM) framework provides a mechanism for +various security checks to be hooked by new kernel extensions. The name +"module" is a bit of a misnomer since these extensions are not actually +loadable kernel modules. Instead, they are selectable at build-time via +CONFIG_DEFAULT_SECURITY and can be overridden at boot-time via the +``"security=..."`` kernel command line argument, in the case where multiple +LSMs were built into a given kernel. + +The primary users of the LSM interface are Mandatory Access Control +(MAC) extensions which provide a comprehensive security policy. Examples +include SELinux, Smack, Tomoyo, and AppArmor. In addition to the larger +MAC extensions, other extensions can be built using the LSM to provide +specific changes to system operation when these tweaks are not available +in the core functionality of Linux itself. + +Without a specific LSM built into the kernel, the default LSM will be the +Linux capabilities system. Most LSMs choose to extend the capabilities +system, building their checks on top of the defined capability hooks. +For more details on capabilities, see ``capabilities(7)`` in the Linux +man-pages project. + +A list of the active security modules can be found by reading +``/sys/kernel/security/lsm``. This is a comma separated list, and +will always include the capability module. The list reflects the +order in which checks are made. The capability module will always +be first, followed by any "minor" modules (e.g. Yama) and then +the one "major" module (e.g. SELinux) if there is one configured. diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/index.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/index.rst index 8c60a8a32a1a..e14c374aaf60 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/index.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/index.rst @@ -61,6 +61,7 @@ configure specific aspects of kernel behavior to your liking. java ras pm/index + LSM/index .. only:: subproject and html |