selinuxd

This a daemon that has the purpose of installing and removing policies as they are laid in a specific directory. This directory is /etc/selinux.d by default.

The intent is to follow a infrastructure-as-code approach for installing SELinux policies. With this, installing policies is a matter of persisting policy files in a specific directory, which the daemon will immediately pick up and try to install them.

Building

Golang 1.15 and GNU make are required. In Fedora 33, the installation is a matter of doing:

$ sudo dnf install golang make libsemanage-devel policycoreutils

With this, you can build the daemon's binary with make build, or simply make. the binary will be persisted to the bin/ directory.

Running

Once you have built the binary, simply do:

$ sudo ./bin/selinuxdctl daemon

or

$ make run

Note that sudo is needed as it'll attempt to install SELinux policies, which requires root. Also note that the run target will attempt to create /etc/selinux.d.

This will:

• Listen for file changes in the /etc/selinux.d directory

  • When a file is added or modified, it'll attempt to install the policy

  • When a file is removed, it'll uninstall the policy

Testing (for demo purposes)

With the daemon running, do:

$ sudo cp tests/data/testport.cil /etc/selinux.d/

Notice that the policy will be installed in the system shortly:

$ sudo semodule -l | grep testport

Now, remove the policy:

$ sudo rm /etc/selinux.d/testport.cil

Notice that the policy will no longer be there:

$ sudo semodule -l | grep testport

Why?

This enables an easy way to install policies by establishing intent, as opposed to having to tell a system how to do things. This way, all we need to do is tell a system that we want a file in a specific path in the file system, and the rest will be taken care of.

SELinux policies often are used to secure workloads on nodes and should be treated as part of the workload deployment. By getting this daemon to dynamically install and track these policies, we're able to more closely link the policies to the workloads that require them. Policies, in this context, are not configuration files for the node, but instead and statements on how to secure a running workload.

OpenShift/Machine Config Operator

The Machine Config Operator is an operator that ensures that the nodes belonging to an OpenShift cluster are in a certain state.

If this daemon would be running on a node in the cluster, all we would need to do to install a policy is:

apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
  name: 50-example-sepolicy
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 2.2.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:,%3B%20Declare%20a%20test_port_t%20type%0A%28type%20test_port_t%29%0A%3B%20Assign%20the%20type%20to%20the%20object_r%20role%0A%28roletype%20object_r%20test_port_t%29%0A%0A%3B%20Assign%20the%20right%20set%20of%20attributes%20to%20the%20port%0A%28typeattributeset%20defined_port_type%20test_port_t%29%0A%28typeattributeset%20port_type%20test_port_t%29%0A%0A%3B%20Declare%20tcp%3A1440%20as%20test_port_t%0A%28portcon%20tcp%201440%20%28system_u%20object_r%20test_port_t%20%28%28s0%29%20%28s0%29%29%29%29
        filesystem: root
        mode: 0600
        path: /etc/selinux.d/testport.cil

This MachineConfig object tells the operator to put the policy in the specified path, with the specified permissions. Note that the policy is URL encoded due to what the ignition format requires.

Without this daemon, each policy installation would require us to persist the file on the node, then run a one-off systemd unit to install the policy. As policies get added to the system, the number of systemd units increases, which is neither scalable nor user-friendly.

Uses

This daemon is currently being used in the security-profiles-operator in order to do the heavy lifting of installing SELinux policies. The operator itself manages the policies as Kubernetes objects, and the daemon makes sure that they are actually installed in the nodes of the cluster.