Sidewinder G2 6.1.2 Administration Guide - Glossary of Technical ...

Type Enforced attributes
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Type Enforced environment
When an administrator initially logs into the Sidewinder G2 at a command line
prompt, they are automatically placed in the User domain, which allows no
access to sensitive files. An administrator may then switch to their defined
administrative role’s domain using the srole command (for Admn) or srole
adminro (for AdRO). The Admn domain allows an administrator to access to
all administrative functions. The AdRO domain allows read-only access to the
system configuration areas, as well as the ability to generate reports. An
administrator with read-only access cannot make system modifications.
This guide assumes that most commands will be issued by administrators with
read/write access, and therefore only includes the srole command. If you are
a read-only administrator and have reason to access the command line,
always use srole adminro instead of srole alone.
For information on assigning administrator roles, see “Setting up and
maintaining administrator accounts” on page 43.
Inter-domain operations
Interactions between domains, such as signalling, are also controlled by Type
Enforcement. For example, a process running in the SMTP domain cannot
send a signal to the Telnet server running in the Telnet domain.
Access to system calls
A typical UNIX system has many privileged system calls that could enable
malicious users to access the kernel directly and compromise the system. The
Sidewinder G2 solves this problem with a set of flags for each domain that
indicate which system calls can be made from that domain.
Files available to a process
Process-to-file access is controlled by a Domain Definition Table that maps out
the various classes of data files and processes that may be running on the
Sidewinder G2. The table specifies which process domains can access
different types of files and what type of access is allowed (such as read/write/
execute). This table cannot be circumvented.
Your system is pre-configured so that domains have access only to the files
they need. The Domain Definition Table cannot be changed while the
Operational kernel is running. This prevents intruders from tricking the kernel
into modifying the table. Also, Type Enforcement prevents intruders from
installing software that may be used to circumvent Sidewinder G2 security
mechanisms.
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