Medusa DS9 Security System


Medusa is a package that improves the overall security of the Linux OS by
extending the standard Linux (Unix) security architecture while preserving
backward compatibility. Briefly, it supports, at the kernel level, a user-space
authorization server (and is thus fully transparent to any user space
applications). Before the execution of certain operations, the kernel asks the
authorization server for confirmation.  The authorization server then permits
or forbids the operation. The authorization server can also affect the way an
operation is executed in some cases, which are described later. This method
allows the use of almost any security architecture. When the authorization
server is properly configured, it can determine access rights within the system
to a very fine level and do very good auditing.


ARCHITECTURE

Currently, Medusa consists of two basic parts: a small patch to the Linux
kernel and a user space security daemon called "Constable". Constable is the
current implementation of an authorization server. User space implementation
allows kernel changes to be simpler and smaller and thus easier to port to
new versions of the Linux kernel and to be more flexible, so improvements to the
authorization server should not require changes in the kernel.

Communication between Constable and kernel goes through the special device
"/dev/medusa" (char major 111 minor 0), because it should be both fast and
flexible. When the kernel needs confirmation, it writes data to this device,
makes the current process sleep and wakes up Constable. Constable reads the
data from /dev/medusa, chooses a response (depending on his configuration, which
is discussed in doc/Constable), sends it back to the kernel and sleeps. The
kernel gets the data, wakes up the process and determine the result of the
operation. Constable can also send certain commands to the kernel (even if the
kernel doesn't require them), which are then executed by the kernel. The
security daemon has to use a specific communication protocol defined in kernel,
so it is possible to implement a full-featured authorization server by only
knowing this protocol and knowing that the kernel supports it, without worrying
what's really happening in the kernel. Constable is only one example of such an
authorization server. The protocol allows communication in the form of packets
which carry all necessary data.


IMPLEMENTATION

The current implementation of Medusa in the kernel, in cooperation with the
security daemon in user space, has these features:

	o  full access control to any file in the system (via VFS)

	o  ability to redirect access to the selected file or to another one

	o  complete control of signal sending/receiving

	o  direct control of important process actions

	o  control of execution of any syscalls for specified processes

	o  every process or file is a member of a specified virtual subsystems
	   and every process has assigned access rights to VS. (It is possible
	   to completely hide processes or files from other processes this way.)

        o  every process has a login uid (luid), which is set only on the first
	   call of set{re,s}uid

	o  ability to force execution of specified code for any process
	   (similar to signal handling, see doc/Code_forcing for details)

	o  low level control of any system call

Use of these features depends on the implementation of the security daemon and
details of its configuration. At least Constable can use all of them. These
features are described in detail in doc/Features. To learn more about the
implementation of Medusa in the Linux kernel see doc/Kernel or the patched
kernel sources. Constable is currently implemented as an interpreter of its own
configuration language (very similar to C), so it is possible to implement
theoretically any system security model. With Medusa (and Constable), you can
almost completely override the current Linux security model, and you can create
a small subset of extensions to it, as well. Currently, Medusa works only on
the i386 architecture, but we plan to support other architectures that are
supported by Linux, as soon as these CPUs are made available to us.


LICENSE

The entire Medusa package is distributed under under GNU GPL v2 license.
See doc/COPYING for details.


AUTHORS
	Programming and everything else:

		Marek Zelem 
		Milan Pikula 
		Martin Ockajak 

	Helpful testing, bugreports and comments:

		Jan Varga 
		Robert Varga 
		Robert Dobozy 


FOOTNOTES

**
** 	You are strongly encouraged to join Medusa mailing list by
** sending an e-mail with "subscribe medusa" in the body of message
** to listserv@medusa.fornax.sk.
** 

Homepage of Medusa is at http://medusa.fornax.sk.

Medusa was not thoroughly tested on multiprocessor systems,
but it seems to work well.

Feel free to post any questions, comments, ideas, critics or very nice
Constable configuration files to the Medusa mailing list at
medusa@medusa.fornax.sk.