| NetLabel Introduction |
| ============================================================================== |
| Paul Moore, paul.moore@hp.com |
| |
| August 2, 2006 |
| |
| * Overview |
| |
| NetLabel is a mechanism which can be used by kernel security modules to attach |
| security attributes to outgoing network packets generated from user space |
| applications and read security attributes from incoming network packets. It |
| is composed of three main components, the protocol engines, the communication |
| layer, and the kernel security module API. |
| |
| * Protocol Engines |
| |
| The protocol engines are responsible for both applying and retrieving the |
| network packet's security attributes. If any translation between the network |
| security attributes and those on the host are required then the protocol |
| engine will handle those tasks as well. Other kernel subsystems should |
| refrain from calling the protocol engines directly, instead they should use |
| the NetLabel kernel security module API described below. |
| |
| Detailed information about each NetLabel protocol engine can be found in this |
| directory, consult '00-INDEX' for filenames. |
| |
| * Communication Layer |
| |
| The communication layer exists to allow NetLabel configuration and monitoring |
| from user space. The NetLabel communication layer uses a message based |
| protocol built on top of the Generic NETLINK transport mechanism. The exact |
| formatting of these NetLabel messages as well as the Generic NETLINK family |
| names can be found in the the 'net/netlabel/' directory as comments in the |
| header files as well as in 'include/net/netlabel.h'. |
| |
| * Security Module API |
| |
| The purpose of the NetLabel security module API is to provide a protocol |
| independent interface to the underlying NetLabel protocol engines. In addition |
| to protocol independence, the security module API is designed to be completely |
| LSM independent which should allow multiple LSMs to leverage the same code |
| base. |
| |
| Detailed information about the NetLabel security module API can be found in the |
| 'include/net/netlabel.h' header file as well as the 'lsm_interface.txt' file |
| found in this directory. |