1 Securing Inter-process Communications in SELinux

In the modern computing world, a secure system is best implemented with mandatory access control (MAC) mecha-nisms. One aspect of secure system design is the careful definition of information flows between processes- inter-process communications (IPC). System designers, when weighing the security risks and functionality of different types of IPC, have had to rely on intuition and experience because of the lack of documentation regarding the secu-rity properties of the IPC mechanisms. This paper explores the security functionality that the underlying operating system must support to facilitate secure communication between processes in a Linux operating system. Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) provides the MAC mechanisms used to support and ensure secure communication be-tween processes, as is illustrated through the example secure IPC mechanism presented in this paper. This example is achieved through a combination of SELinux policy and traditional Linux IPC mechanisms, and presents the best combination of security and throughput available in SELinux. 1