On 08/31/2010 05:32 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Wed, Sep 01, 2010 at 00:14:09 +0900,
Takehiko Abe<keke(a)gol.com> wrote:
> ;;; sorry other one goes straight to you
>
> > Linus is not exactly famous for his ability to understand security
> > concepts. I find the fact your argument is produced by google and
> > cut/paste rather than technical material ... enlightening
>
> Well, please educate me. All I hear from advocates is "more security"
> without a concrete example. You mentioned the danger of emails get
> stolen without SELinux. Please give me the scenario. So we can gauge
> the risk.
If you read email you need selinux. If you read email with a client that
fires up plugins to read special content (e.g. html, pdfs, flash) then you
really need selinux.
If you use a web browser to view more than a short list of trusted sites,
you need selinux.
If you run network services accessible from outside the machine then you
need selinux.
If you run binaries from semitrusted groups (this includes most commercial
software) then you need selinux.
You don't _need_ SELinux in any such cases.
SELinux is aiming at catching malfunctioning/misbehaving programs and
_may_ prevent damage in use-cases such as those you list.
However, SELinux also causes mal-functions and prevents applications
from operating properly. Semi-educated tweaking SELinux may even cause
further damage up to rendering systems completely unusable.
To me this means: If the defaults work, use it. If it doesn't, switch it
off, otherwise you might easily shoot yourself into the foot.
Ralf