1===================== 2NetLabel Introduction 3===================== 4 5Paul Moore, paul.moore@hp.com 6 7August 2, 2006 8 9Overview 10======== 11 12NetLabel is a mechanism which can be used by kernel security modules to attach 13security attributes to outgoing network packets generated from user space 14applications and read security attributes from incoming network packets. It 15is composed of three main components, the protocol engines, the communication 16layer, and the kernel security module API. 17 18Protocol Engines 19================ 20 21The protocol engines are responsible for both applying and retrieving the 22network packet's security attributes. If any translation between the network 23security attributes and those on the host are required then the protocol 24engine will handle those tasks as well. Other kernel subsystems should 25refrain from calling the protocol engines directly, instead they should use 26the NetLabel kernel security module API described below. 27 28Detailed information about each NetLabel protocol engine can be found in this 29directory. 30 31Communication Layer 32=================== 33 34The communication layer exists to allow NetLabel configuration and monitoring 35from user space. The NetLabel communication layer uses a message based 36protocol built on top of the Generic NETLINK transport mechanism. The exact 37formatting of these NetLabel messages as well as the Generic NETLINK family 38names can be found in the 'net/netlabel/' directory as comments in the 39header files as well as in 'include/net/netlabel.h'. 40 41Security Module API 42=================== 43 44The purpose of the NetLabel security module API is to provide a protocol 45independent interface to the underlying NetLabel protocol engines. In addition 46to protocol independence, the security module API is designed to be completely 47LSM independent which should allow multiple LSMs to leverage the same code 48base. 49 50Detailed information about the NetLabel security module API can be found in the 51'include/net/netlabel.h' header file as well as the 'lsm_interface.txt' file 52found in this directory. 53