Having read the article I could not find any example of what is impossible in AppArmor, just a statement repeated in various ways that SELinux is easier to provide a secure-by-default environment with the closest thing to justification being that SELinux models things with types whereas app armor deals with restrictions on specific applications. I’m sure this all makes sense to someone already well-versed in the space, but I’m left with the same question as OP.
> I could not find any example of what is impossible in AppArmor,
AppArmor is simply less granular. For example, it doesn't provide true RBAC or MLS security models. It also uses paths instead of inodes, so a hard link can be used to override some policies.
So it just depends on what the exploit or attack is trying to do. If an attacker gets root and is trying to overwrite a file, they may be able to. Maybe they can't, but they could probably still execute any code they can write and compile themselves. And perhaps they can write to other files and do damage.
SELinux and similar systems allow a lot more granularity. Programs and users can only talk to explicit what they are allowed to talk to, and maybe you want to limit the access to say, append instead of full write access.
It just allows a lot more granularity and restriction, that's the difference.
I was surprised by his praise of MCS. We noticed it when reusing the same volume for subsequent reuse of a podman volume. It's a couple of years already, but it was not really explained in the documentation, only in a blog post by a RH emloyee. One weird thing is that the labels are random, but the range of possible values is rather small. So a determined attacker could brute force them. Also we always had a mix of files with and without MCS labels on the volume. IIRC moving or copying files led to different results. Not clear to me why a copy should be protected differently than a moved file, they seem of similar sensitivity to me.
It's been a while and we hacked around it, don't remember how. Except that it was not the #1 solution, disable SELinux altogether.
vlovich123|1 year ago
ruthmarx|1 year ago
AppArmor is simply less granular. For example, it doesn't provide true RBAC or MLS security models. It also uses paths instead of inodes, so a hard link can be used to override some policies.
So it just depends on what the exploit or attack is trying to do. If an attacker gets root and is trying to overwrite a file, they may be able to. Maybe they can't, but they could probably still execute any code they can write and compile themselves. And perhaps they can write to other files and do damage.
SELinux and similar systems allow a lot more granularity. Programs and users can only talk to explicit what they are allowed to talk to, and maybe you want to limit the access to say, append instead of full write access.
It just allows a lot more granularity and restriction, that's the difference.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
NewJazz|1 year ago
usr1106|1 year ago
It's been a while and we hacked around it, don't remember how. Except that it was not the #1 solution, disable SELinux altogether.