Xen devel - Jun 2005 - RE: [Xense-devel] Re: [PATCH] sHype access controlarchitecture for Xen

Lets not confuse the issues here and don''t turn this into a programming
language argument. With the sHype patches there is a well defined
language for specifying policies and there is a well defined binary
representation for that policy. That is a very good start!

I see the java tool as a *sample* implementation of a translator between
the two. You are free to write/use your own compiler in a language of
your choice. None of this affects the basic operation of MAC per se.

Off the top of my head here is a list of more interesting subjects:
- consistent/meaningful labeling of objects and subjects
- exposing these labels to service OSes who need to perform MAC
- ensuring that access check hooks are in the right place
- efficient policy cache implementation
- assistance in defining sensible/usable policies
- considering groups of VMs in MAC policies
I''m sure there are others (also see the minutes of the last Xen
Security
meeting posted to this list mid may which documented some of the MAC
related discussions)

<rant>
I''d rather see discussions on these subjects than whether gcj compiles
the policy compiler or whether it should be written in a different
language etc.
</rant>

rolf



> -----Original Message-----
> From: xense-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com [mailto:xense-devel-
> bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of aq
> Sent: 21 June 2005 15:49
> To: Ray Valdez
> Cc: xen-devel@lists.xensource.com; Stefan Berger; Tupshin Harper;
> steven.hand@cl.cam.ac.uk; xense-devel@lists.xensource.com
> Subject: [Xense-devel] Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] sHype access
> controlarchitecture for Xen
> 
> On 6/21/05, Ray Valdez <rvaldez@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > On 6/21/05, Tupshin Harper <tupshin@tupshin.com> wrote:
> > > aq wrote:
> > >
> > > >any plan to write the tool in other language, not Java? i
guess
not
> > > >many people (include me) are willing to install Java on their
system.
> > > >
> > > >since python is used in xen, i  think it is a good candidate.
> > > >
> > > >i will play with the code and give some feedbacks.
> >
> > > Ensuring that the code compiles cleanly with gcj would eliminate
this
> > issue.
> >
> > We will look into compiling the tool with gcj. Thanks. We will
> appreciate
> > your feedback.
> >
> > > but we still need java to run the binary code, dont we?
> >
> > No. The tool is used for generating a binary policy file, which can
then
> be
> > loaded into sHype via the
> > xeno-unstable.bk/tools/policy/policy_tool command.
> >
> 
> to tell the truth, installing java into any of my machines is the last
> thing i want to do. if it is possible to compile java code to native
> binary, that would be great. then java turns out to be even better
> than python, right ;-)
> 
> regards,
> aq
> 
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