Yeah, AppArmor is a lot more straightforward. I could buy an argument that technically the SELinux approach is more flexible, but it’s hard to imagine someone needing that much flexibility in the general use case.
I can understand why something like Android could get more mileage out of SELinux’ model, but most scenarios are very capably modeled by AppArmor approach and much easier and less fragile functionality wise.
You have two applications installed which bring their own labels and rules, lets say app_a_t and app_b_t.
Now you want to give AppA read access to only one specific directory of AppB data (which is labeled app_b_t).
How to do that? Writing a rule allowing acces between the labels would give AppA access to all of AppB data. Creating a new label for this specific dir would break AppB as it relies on the rules for app_b_t.
My biggest issue with SELinux is that files and applications can not have multiple types at once (like with a role based model).
Over the last year I have done this entire. Went from app armor to SEL and now I’m back on app armor.
You couldn’t pay me enough to try SEL again.
Yeah, AppArmor is a lot more straightforward. I could buy an argument that technically the SELinux approach is more flexible, but it’s hard to imagine someone needing that much flexibility in the general use case.
I can understand why something like Android could get more mileage out of SELinux’ model, but most scenarios are very capably modeled by AppArmor approach and much easier and less fragile functionality wise.
In some usecases SELinux is less flexible:
You have two applications installed which bring their own labels and rules, lets say
app_a_tandapp_b_t. Now you want to give AppA read access to only one specific directory of AppB data (which is labeledapp_b_t).How to do that? Writing a rule allowing acces between the labels would give AppA access to all of AppB data. Creating a new label for this specific dir would break AppB as it relies on the rules for
app_b_t.My biggest issue with SELinux is that files and applications can not have multiple types at once (like with a role based model).