Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
SELinux System Administration

You're reading from   SELinux System Administration Effectively secure your Linux systems with SELinux

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Dec 2016
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781787126954
Length 300 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
Tools
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Sven Vermeulen Sven Vermeulen
Author Profile Icon Sven Vermeulen
Sven Vermeulen
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (11) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Fundamental SELinux Concepts FREE CHAPTER 2. Understanding SELinux Decisions and Logging 3. Managing User Logins 4. Process Domains and File-Level Access Controls 5. Controlling Network Communications 6. sVirt and Docker Support 7. D-Bus and systemd 8. Working with SELinux Policies 9. Analyzing Policy Behavior 10. SELinux Use Cases

SELinux users and roles

Within SELinux systems, the moment a user logs in, the login system checks which SELinux user his or her login is mapped to. Then, when a SELinux user is found, the system looks up the role and domain that the user should be in and sets that as the user's context.

Listing SELinux user mappings

When logged in to the system, we can use id -Z to obtain the current SELinux context. For many users, this context will be unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023, regardless of their username. If not that, it will be a context based on one of sysadm_u, staff_u, or user_u. This is because the majority of Linux distributions will only provide a limited set of SELinux users by default, aligned with the SELinux roles that they support.

When the login process is triggered, a local definition file will be checked to see which SELinux user is mapped to the Linux account. Let's take a look at the existing login mappings using semanage login -l. The following output...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at €18.99/month. Cancel anytime