On Wednesday 20 April 2005 19:22, Richard Hally rhally@mindspring.com wrote:
Using dontaudit rules for such things also gives correct behavior in situations where relabelling will not. As an example there is the following rule: dontaudit lvm_t file_t:dir search;
Without this rule the lvm utilities when run before /var is mounted would create the /var/lock directory on the mount-point. This is not desired functionality, the machine is in single-user mode at the time (so the lack of locking is not a problem) and creating directories that later get hidden by mounting a file system is not desirable.
So far no-one has provided any reasons not to use dontaudit rules. Accusations of kludging don't count as a reason.
I don't consider file_t labelling for a mount point as "mislabelling". The mount point directory is expected to be hidden, so generally only mount needs to access it.
I for one consider the use of "dontaudit" to be unethical but that is just my opinion.
Why is it unethical to make software perform correctly even when it is not written to?
Think about preventing someone's software from doing what was designed and implemented to do. Shouldn't you at least notify the developer/maintainer that there is a problem with their software? That
Yes, I do that. I don't always notify them first. The first priority is to get the policy fixed, if I don't do it then someone else may do it and do it badly (see this thread as an example).
seems to be the correct thing to do in the open source community. If there is a actual security problem shouldn't there be some notification of the vulnerability as a minimum? If it is not an actual security vulnerability but perhaps a theoretical one, a proof of concept is usually appropriate.
If it's a functionality issue such as creating a directory /var/lock on the root file system when /var is a mount point then it's not such a big deal.
If it is a violation of some generally accepted standard, isn't a bugzilla the right thing to do?
Yes. Of course there are other considerations. Sometimes I already have some open bug reports and don't feel inclined to make minor bug reports when more serious bugs are open.
If some action by the software is "uninteresting" shouldn't it be allowed absent some reason that makes it in fact "interesting"?
Searching a directory of type file_t that is an empty mount point isn't interesting. If however a directory that shouldn't be accessed by the program in question gets type file_t through file system corruption or other errors then we do not want to allow such access.
I would like to hear what others think of this "dontaudit considered harmful" idea. I understand the use of dontaudit as a temporary expedient but other than that it seem that there should be more done about the situations where it is used at least in terms of notifying the developers/maintainers of the software involved.
Why don't you go through the policy, remove a bunch of dontaudit rules and see what happens.