Project Overview

The SELinux Reference Policy project (refpolicy) is creating a complete SELinux

policy as an alternative to the existing strict and targeted policies available

from http://selinux.sf.net. Once complete,

this policy will be able to be used as the system policy for a variety of

systems and used as the basis for creating other policies. Refpolicy is based on

the current strict and targeted policies, but aims to accomplish many additional

goals.

Refpolicy is under active development, with support and full time development

staff from Tresys Technology. The

first release is available from the download

page. This release is far from complete and is not usable as a drop in

replacement for the existing policies. It is for interested policy developers

and community members to examine and comment upon. The

status page has more details on what is

included in the current release. This project is just getting started and we are

looking for policy developers interested in contributing.

Project Goals

Security

Security is the reason for existence for SELinux policies and must,

therefore, always be the first priority. The common view of security as a binary

state (secure or not secure) is not a sufficient goal for developing an SELinux

policy. In reality, different systems have different requirements and purposes

and corresponding differences in the meaning of secure. What is a fundamental

security flaw on one system might be the acceptable, or even the primary

functionality, of another. The challenge for a system policies like the current

strict and targeted policy or refpolicy is to support as many of these differring

security goals as is practical. To accomplish this refpolicy will provide:

	
Security Goals: clearly stated security goals will for each

		component of the policy. This will allow policy developers to

		determine if a given component meets their security needs.

	
Flexible Base Policy: a base policy that protects the basic

		operating system and serves as a foundation to the rest of the

		policy. This base policy should be able to support a variety of

		application policies with differing security goals.

	
Application Policy Variations: application policy variations

		that make different security tradeoffs. For example, two Apache

		policies might be created. One that is for serving read-only,

		static content that is severely restricted and another that is

		appropriate for dynamic content.

	
Configuration Tools: configuration tools that allow the

		policy developer to make important security decisions including

		defining roles, configuring networking, and trading legacy

		compatibility for increased security.

	
Multi-Level Security: MLS will be supported out-of-the-box

		without requiring destructive changes to the policy. It will be

		possible to compile and MLS and non-MLS policy from the same

		policy files by switching a configuration option.

Usability and Documentation

The difficulty and complexity of creating SELinux policies has become the number

one barrier to the adoption of SELinux. It also potentially reduces the security

of the policies: a policy that is too complex to easily understand is difficult

to make secure. Refpolicy aims to make aggressive improvements in this area,

making policies easier to develop, understand, and analyze. This will be

addressed through improved structuring and organization, the addition of

modularity and abstraction, and documentation. See

getting started and

documentation for more information.

Flexibility and Configuration

Refpolicy aims to support a variety of policy configurations and formats,

including standard source policies, MLS policies, and

loadable policy modules

all from the same source tree. This is done through the addition of

infrastructure for automatically handling the differences between source and

loadable module based policies and the additional MLS fields to all policy

statements that include contexts.