Prepare a successful deployment of Novell AppArmor on your system by carefully considering the following items:
Determine the applications to profile. Read more on this in Section 41.3.1, Choosing the Applications to Profile.
Build the needed profiles as roughly outlined in Section 41.3.2, Building and Modifying Profiles. Check the results and adjust the profiles when necessary.
Keep track of what is happening on your system by running AppArmor reports and dealing with security events. Refer to Section 41.3.3, Configuring Novell AppArmor Event Notification and Reports.
Update your profiles whenever your environment changes or you need to react to security events logged by AppArmor's reporting tool. Refer to Section 41.3.4, Updating Your Profiles.
You only need to protect the programs that are exposed to attacks in your particular setup, so only use profiles for those applications you really run. Use the following list to determine the most likely candidates:
Programs (servers and clients) that have open network ports. User clients, such as mail clients and Web browsers, mediate privilege. These programs run with the privilege to write to the user's home directory and they process input from potentially hostile remote sources, such as hostile Web sites and e-mailed malicious code.
Programs that can be invoked through a Web browser, including CGI Perl scripts, PHP pages, and more complex Web applications.
Programs that the cron daemon periodically run read input from a variety of sources.
To find out which processes are currently running with open network ports and might need a profile to confine them, run aa-unconfined as root.
Example 41-1 Output of aa-unconfined
19848 /usr/sbin/cupsd not confined 19887 /usr/sbin/sshd not confined 19947 /usr/lib/postfix/master not confined 29205 /usr/sbin/sshd confined by '/usr/sbin/sshd (enforce)'
Each of the processes in the above example labeled not confined might need a custom profile to confine it. Those labeled confined by are already protected by AppArmor.
HINT: For More Information
For more information about choosing the the right applications to
profile, refer to Section 1.2, Determining Programs to Immunize,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ).
Novell AppArmor on openSUSE ships with a preconfigured set of profiles for the most important applications. In addition to that, you can use AppArmor to create your own profiles for any application you want.
There are two ways of managing profiles. One is to use the graphical front-end provided by the YaST Novell AppArmor modules and the other is to use the command line tools provided by the AppArmor suite itself. Both methods basically work the same way.
Running aa-unconfined as described in Section 41.3.1, Choosing the Applications to Profile identifies a list of applications that may need a profile to run in a safe mode.
For each application, perform the following steps to create a profile:
As root, let AppArmor create a rough outline of the application's profile by running aa-genprof programname
or
Outline the basic profile by running
and specifying the complete path of the application to profile.A basic profile is outlined and AppArmor is put into learning mode, which means that it logs any activity of the program you are executing but does not yet restrict it.
Run the full range of the application's actions to let AppArmor get a very specific picture of its activities.
Let AppArmor analyze the log files generated in Step 2 by running typing S in aa-genprof.
or
Analyze the logs by clicking
in the and following the instructions given in the wizard until the profile is completed.AppArmor scans the logs it recorded during the application's run and asks you to set the access rights for each event that was logged. Either set them for each file or use globbing.
Depending on the complexity of your application, it might be necessary to repeat Step 2 and Step 3. Confine the application, exercise it under the confined conditions, and process any new log events. To properly confine the full range of an application's capabilities, you might be required to repeat this procedure often.
Once all access permissions are set, your profile is set to enforce mode. The profile is applied and AppArmor restricts the application according to the profile just created.
If you started aa-genprof on an application that had an existing
profile that was in complain mode, this profile remains in learning
mode upon exit of this learning cycle. For more information about changing
the mode of a profile, refer to aa-complain—Entering Complain or Learning Mode,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ) and aa-enforce—Entering Enforce Mode,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ).
Test your profile settings by performing every task you need with the application you just confined. Normally, the confined program runs smoothly and you do not notice AppArmor activities at all. However, if you notice certain misbehavior with your application, check the system logs and see if AppArmor is too tightly confining your application. Depending on the log mechanism used on your system, there are several places to look for AppArmor log entries:
If the audit package is installed and auditd is running, AppArmor events are logged as follows:
type=APPARMOR msg=audit(1140325305.502:1407): REJECTING w access to /usr/lib/firefox/update.test (firefox-bin(9469) profile /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin active /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin)
If auditd is not used, AppArmor events are logged in the standard system log under /var/log/messages. An example entry would look like the following:
Feb 22 18:29:14 dhcp-81 klogd: audit(1140661749.146:3): REJECTING w access to /dev/console (mdnsd(3239) profile /usr/sbin/mdnsd active /usr/sbin/mdnsd)
If auditd is not running, AppArmor events can also be checked using the dmesg command:
audit(1140661749.146:3): REJECTING w access to /dev/console (mdnsd(3239) profile /usr/sbin/mdnsd active /usr/sbin/mdnsd)
To adjust the profile, analyze the log messages relating to this application again as described in Step 3. Determine the access rights or restrictions when prompted.
HINT: For More Information
For more information about profile building and modification, refer
to Section 2.0, Profile Components and Syntax,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ), Section 3.0, Building and Managing Profiles with YaST,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ), and Section 4.0, Building Profiles from the Command Line,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ).
Set up event notification in Novell AppArmor so you can review security events. Event Notification is an Novell AppArmor feature that informs a specified e-mail recipient when systemic Novell AppArmor activity occurs under the chosen severity level. This feature is currently available in the YaST interface.
To set up event notification in YaST, proceed as follows:
Make sure that a mail server is running on your system to deliver the event notifications.
Log in as root and start YaST. Then select ).
In
, select .For each record type (
, , and ), set a report frequency, enter the e-mail address that should receive the reports, and determine the severity of events to log. To include unknown events in the event reports, check .NOTE: Selecting Events to Log
Unless you are familiar with AppArmor's event categorization, choose to be notified about events for all security levels.
Leave this dialog with
to apply your settings.Using Novell AppArmor reports, you can read important Novell AppArmor security events reported in the log files without manually sifting through the cumbersome messages only useful to the aa-logprof tool. You can decrease the size of the report by filtering by date range or program name.
To configure the AppArmor reports, proceed as follows:
Log in as root and start YaST. Select .
Select the type of report to examine or configure from
, , and .Edit the report generation frequency, e-mail address, export format, and location of the reports by selecting
and providing the requested data.To run a report of the selected type, click
.Browse through the archived reports of a given type by selecting
and specifying the report type.or
Delete unneeded reports or add new ones.
HINT: For More Information
For more information about configuring event notification in Novell AppArmor,
refer to Section 6.2, Configuring Security Event Notification,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ). Find more information about report
configuration in Section 6.3, Configuring Reports,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ).
Software and system configurations change over time. As a result of that, your profile setup for AppArmor might need some fine-tuning from time to time. AppArmor checks your system log for policy violations or other AppArmor events and lets you adjust your profile set accordingly. Any application behavior that is outside of any profile definition can also be addressed using the
.To update your profile set, proceed as follows:
Log in as root and start YaST.
Start
.Adjust access or execute rights to any resource or for any executable that has been logged when prompted.
Leave YaST after you answer all questions. Your changes are applied to the respective profiles.
HINT: For More Information
For more information about updating your profiles from the system
logs, refer to Section 3.5, Updating Profiles from Log Entries,
(↑ Novell AppArmor Administration Guide ).