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SELinux

selinux (Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a mandatory access control (MAC) security mechanism implemented in the kernel.)

Legacy access control: traditional discretionary access control (DAC)

Modes:
enforcing : enforce the SELinux security policy, denying access and logging actions
permissive: only warn and log actions (for debugging)
disabled  : turned off

To configure selinux rules from a GUI tool, do:

dnf install policycoreutils-gui  policycoreutils  policycoreutils-python

system-config-selinux
selinux ui

Display SELinux status

sestatus

Display the security context for a file or folder.

ll -Z /etc/yum.repos.d/
-rw-r--r--.   root root  system_u:object_r:system_conf_t:s0    elrepo.repo
-rw-r--r--.   root root  system_u:object_r:system_conf_t:s0    epel.repo
-rw-r--r--.   root root  system_u:object_r:system_conf_t:s0    fedora28.repo
-rw-r--r--.   root root  system_u:object_r:system_conf_t:s0    Rocky-AppStream.repo
-rw-r--r--.   root root  system_u:object_r:system_conf_t:s0    Rocky-BaseOS.repo
-rw-r--r--.   root root  system_u:object_r:system_conf_t:s0    Rocky-Extras.repo
-rw-r--r--.   root root  system_u:object_r:system_conf_t:s0    vasilian.repo

-Z implemented in most utilities will show the SELinux context

ps axZ

SELinux security context fields unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 are based on user:role:type:mls

SELinux security context of Apache web server.

ps axZ | grep httpd
system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0   634 ?  Ss  0:00  /usr/bin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
ls -Z $HOME/.bashrc
-rw-r--r--. mihai mihai unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 /home/mihai/.bashrc

Access is allowed between similar types. httpd_t can read httpd_sys_content_t but nothing else, like files from home directory with user_home_t.

SELinux may deny access due to:

1) a mislabeled file

2) a process running under the wrong SELinux context

3) a bug in policy (a rule not anticipated when the policy was written)

4) an intrusion attempt

Analyse log messages

cat /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep avc     # if auditd service is running or,
cat /var/log/messages        | grep avc     # if auditd is not running.

Analyze log files in human-readable format.

dnf install setroubleshoot
sealert -b   # gui tool
sealert -a /var/log/audit/audit.log > /root/mylogfile.txt

Change SELinux security context: chcon similar with chown,chmod

man chcon   # --user or -u , --role or -r , --type or -t

touch $HOME/file
chcon --user system_u --role object_r --type usr_t   -v  $HOME/file
chcon -u unconfined_u -r object_r -t user_home_t -v  $HOME/file

cd /var/www/html
chcon --type=httpd_sys_content_t index.html  # or recursive and verbose
chcon -Rv --type=httpd_sys_content_t  /var/www/html

The context set with chcon will survive the reboot but not the file system relabeling.

Write a policy module and merge it into base local rules.

semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "/html(/.*)?"   # to add a file context of type httpd_sys_content_t for everything under /html.

To relabel the entire filesystem SELinux security context (after it was disabled,upgrade,etc) see the link at the top.


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