Mandatory Access Control for Linux Clustered Servers

In today’s world, the use of computers and networks is growing and the vision of a single infrastructure for voice and data is becoming a reality. However, with different technologies and services using the same networking infrastructure, the realization of this vision requires higher levels of security to be implemented in computer systems. Current security solutions do not address all of the security challenges facing today’s computer systems, including clustered platforms, in one comprehensive and coherent fashion. This paper presents the previous work done in the area of access control and then focus on new mechanisms for clustered Linux servers as part of the research project at the Ericsson Open Systems Lab. In this paper, we address the design and implementation of a framework for the mandatory access control in the distributed security infrastructure (DSI). The ongoing work is mainly based on the Flask architecture and the Linux Security Module (LSM) framework with a focus on Linux clustered servers. The paper also addresses the effects of the cluster security on the performance of the distributed system, since enforcing security may introduce degradation in the performance, an increase in administration, and some annoyance for the user. We are implementing cluster-aware access control mechanisms in the Linux kernel. We expect that our work will help position Linux as a secure operating system for clustered servers.