Introducing AppArmor

Contents

17.1. Background Information on AppArmor Profiling

Many security vulnerabilities result from bugs in trusted programs. A trusted program runs with privileges that attackers would like to have. The program fails to keep that trust if there is a bug in the program that allows the attacker to acquire said privilege.

Novell® AppArmor is an application security solution designed specifically to apply privilege confinement to suspect programs. AppArmor allows the administrator to specify the domain of activities the program can perform by developing a security profile for that application (a listing of files that the program may access and the operations the program may perform). AppArmor secures applications by enforcing good application behavior without relying on attack signatures, so it can prevent attacks even if previously unknown vulnerabilities are being exploited.

Novell AppArmor consists of:

Background Information on AppArmor Profiling

For more information about the science and security of Novell AppArmor, refer to the following papers:

SubDomain: Parsimonious Server Security by Crispin Cowan, Steve Beattie, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Calton Pu, Perry Wagle, and Virgil Gligor

Describes the initial design and implementation of Novell AppArmor. Published in the proceedings of the USENIX LISA Conference, December 2000, New Orleans, LA. This paper is now out of date, describing syntax and features that are different from the current Novell AppArmor product. This paper should be used only for background, and not for technical documentation.

Defcon Capture the Flag: Defending Vulnerable Code from Intense Attack by Crispin Cowan, Seth Arnold, Steve Beattie, Chris Wright, and John Viega

A good guide to strategic and tactical use of Novell AppArmor to solve severe security problems in a very short period of time. Published in the Proceedings of the DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Expo (DISCEX III), April 2003, Washington, DC.

AppArmor for Geeks by Seth Arnold

This document tries to convey a better understanding of the technical details of AppArmor. It is available at http://en.opensuse.org/AppArmor_Geeks.

AppArmor Technical Documentation by Andreas Gruenbacher and Seth Arnold

This document discusses the concept and design of AppArmor from a very technical point of view. It is available at http://forgeftp.novell.com//apparmor/LKML_Submission-June-07/techdoc.html.