Policy DSL: High-level Specifications of Information Flows for Security Policies

SELinux security policies are powerful tools to implement properties such as process confinement and least privilege. They can also be used to support MLS policies on SELinux. However, the policies are very complex, and creating them is a difficult and error-prone process. Furthermore, it is not possible to state explicit constraints on an SELinux policy such as “information flowing to the network must be encrypted”. We present two related Domain Specific Languages (DSL) to make it much easier to specify SELinux security policies. The first DSL is called Lobster. Lobster allows the user to state an information flow policy at a very high level of abstraction, and then refine the policy into lower and lower levels until it can be translated by the Lobster compiler into an SELinux policy. The second DSL is called Symbion. Symbion allows the user to state policy constraints such as “information flowing to the network must be encrypted”. Symbion and Lobster will then interfac