7. Udica - Custom SELinux Policies

About 2 min

7. Udica - Custom SELinux Policies 관련

The default Containers SELinux policy does a really good job Podman in RHEL 8. Most containers "just work" but like any security tool, every now and then we need to make some customizations. Sometimes, especially as we expand the types of workloads that we run in containers, we bump into places where SELinux blocks us. Udica allows an administrator to customize the SELinux policy specifically for a workload for without being an SELinux expert.

For example, run the following container:

Input

podman run --name home-test --privileged -v /home/:/home:ro -it ubi8 ls /home

Result

# Error: OCI runtime error: runc: container_linux.go:349: starting container process caused "unknown capability \"CAP_BPF\""

The above command will fail because the default SELinux policy does not allow containers to mount /home as read only. We can verify that there are no allow rules which permit this command to be executed:

Input

sesearch -A -s container_t -t home_root_t -c dir -p read

Result

With Udica, we can quickly and easily configure SELinxux to allow us to mount /home as root. First, we have to extract the meta-data from our container:

podman inspect home-test > home-test.json

Now, Udica will analyze this data and create a custom SELinux policy for us:

Input

udica -j home-test.json home_test

Result

# Policy home_test created!
# 
# Please load these modules using: 
# # semodule -i home_test.cil /usr/share/udica/templates/{base_container.cil,home_container.cil}
# 
# Restart the container with: "--security-opt label=type:home_test.process" parameter

Use the SELinux tools to load the new policy:

Input

semodule -i home_test.cil /usr/share/udica/templates/{base_container.cil,home_container.cil}

Result

Now, run the same type of container again, but pass it a security option telling it to label the process to use our new custom policy, and it will execute without being blocked. First start the contaier:

Input

podman run --name home-test-2 --privileged --security-opt label=type:home_test.process -v /home/:/home:ro -id ubi8 bash

Result

Execute the ls command:

Input

podman exec -it home-test-2 ls /home

Result

# Error: can only create exec sessions on running containers: container state improper

You will notice that the process is running with the "home_test.process" SELinux context:

Input

ps -efZ | grep home_test

Result

# system_u:system_r:unconfined_service_t:s0 root 9611 9134  0 09:23 pts/1    00:00:00 grep --color=auto home_test

We can also verify that there is a new rule in this policy to allow our container to mount /home read only:

Input

sesearch -A -s home_test.process -t home_root_t -c dir -p read

Result

# allow home_test.process home_root_t:dir { getattr ioctl lock open read search };

Conclusions

It's always best to have SELinux enabled, especially with containers. It's so easy to create a custom SELinux policy with Udica, that you should never disable it. If you'd like to understand Udica a bit deeper, check out this great article, Use udica to build SELinux policy for containersopen in new window by Lukas Vrabec. Now, let's move on to another tool.