In this video I want to introduce Mandatory Access Control.
Mandatory Access Control is an optional security system that uses the Linux
kernel security modules to restrict access based on security policies and profiles.
It was introduced because Linux security was never developed with an overall perspective in mind.
It's more about different parts of the Linux operating system.
Now, Mandatory Access Control is independent of the system of Linux permissions and both will apply.
And that means that if it can't be done according to the permissions, Mandatory Access Control is not going to change that.
Now it is mainly used as a solution that locks down a system for types of access that
have not specifically been allowed and that protects Linux against different types of problems, including zero day exploits.
A zero day exploit is an unknown problem in an application. How are you
ever going to protect against an unknown problem because you don't know about it?
Well, that is exactly what Mandatory Access Control is about. You deny unexpected behavior.
You only allow types of behavior that have been specifically allowed.
There are two main systems for mandatory access control and these are Selinux on Red Hat and Apparmor on Ubuntu.