15.11 The MAC Multi-Level Security Module

Module name: mac_mls.ko

Kernel configuration line: options MAC_MLS

Boot option: mac_mls_load="YES"

The mac_mls(4) policy controls access between subjects and objects in the system by enforcing a strict information flow policy.

In MLS environments, a “clearance” level is set in each subject or objects label, along with compartments. Since these clearance or sensibility levels can reach numbers greater than six thousand; it would be a daunting task for any system administrator to thoroughly configure each subject or object. Thankfully, three “instant” labels are already included in this policy.

These labels are mls/low, mls/equal and mls/high. Since these labels are described in depth in the manual page, they will only get a brief description here:

MLS provides for:

The following sysctl tunables are available for the configuration of special services and interfaces:

To manipulate the MLS labels, the setfmac(8) command has been provided. To assign a label to an object, issue the following command:

# setfmac mls/5 test

To get the MLS label for the file test issue the following command:

# getfmac test

This is a summary of the MLS policy's features. Another approach is to create a master policy file in /etc which specifies the MLS policy information and to feed that file into the setfmac command. This method will be explained after all policies are covered.

15.11.1 Planning Mandatory Sensitivity

With the Multi-Level Security Policy Module, an administrator plans for controlling the flow of sensitive information. By default, with its block read up block write down nature, the system defaults everything to a low state. Everything is accessible and an administrator slowly changes this during the configuration stage; augmenting the confidentiality of the information.

Beyond the three basic label options above, an administrator may group users and groups as required to block the information flow between them. It might be easier to look at the information in clearance levels familiarized with words, for instance classifications such as Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. Some administrators might just create different groups based on project levels. Regardless of classification method, a well thought out plan must exist before implementing such a restrictive policy.

Some example situations for this security policy module could be an e-commerce web server, a file server holding critical company information, and financial institution environments. The most unlikely place would be a personal workstation with only two or three users.

This, and other documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/.

For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.