Embedded Linux - Security

Security means access to data and resources on the machine as well as maintaining confidentiality for data handled by the computer. The openness of Linux is the key to its security. The source code is available for anyone and everyone to review; therefore, security loopholes are there for all to see, understand, and fix.

Security has a few different dimensions, all of which may be necessary for an embedded, or any other, system. One is ensuring that users and programs have the minimal level of rights to resources in order to be able to execute; another is keeping information hidden until a user with the correct credentials requests to see or change it. The advantage of Linux is that all of these tools are freely available to you, so you can select the right ones to meet your project requirements.



SELinux
A few years ago, a governmental agency with an interest in security—the National Security Agency (NSA)—and with several other private companies with similar interests took it upon themselves to examine the Linux kernel and introduce concepts such as data protection, program isolation, and security policies, following a Mandatory Access Control (MAC) model. This project is called SELinux (where SE stands for Security Enhanced), and the changes and concepts of the project were made part of the 2.6.0 release of the Linux kernel.

The MAC concepts in SELinux specify controls whereby programs must be assigned the rights to perform certain activities, like opening a socket or file, as part of their security policy. The assignment must come from an administrator; a regular user of the system can’t make changes. SELinux systems operate under the principle of least privilege, meaning that a process has only the rights granted and no more. The least-privilege concept makes errant or compromised programs less dangerous in a properly configured environment, because the administrator has already granted a program the minimal set of rights in order to function. As you may guess, creating security policies can be a project itself. I’ll spend some time talking about how to go about doing this on an embedded system.



PAM
Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) are a way to create a uniform interface to the process of authenticating users. Traditionally, user authentication on a Linux system occurs by looking up the user name in the /etc/passwd file and checking the password encrypted therein (or using the shadow password file). The PAM framework also provides session management: performing certain actions after a user is authenticated and before they log out of the system.

The open design of the PAM system is important for embedded projects that are attached to a network in a corporate environment. For example, if the device serves as a shared drive, some of your target market may use LDAP to decide who has access to the device, whereas others may put use accounts in an NT domain. PAM works equally well with both of these technologies, and you can switch between the two with simple configuration changes.



IPsec
IPsec is a system for authenticating and transmitting data between two trusted hosts over an IP network. IPsec at level 3, the Network Layer of the OSI stack, isn’t a single piece of software but rather a collection of tools working together to provide secure communication. By operating at this layer, IPsec can provide secure communication between hosts with no participation by the protocols running further up the stack.

A classic use for IPSec is encrypting virtual private network traffic. It can also be used in cases where you want to use a simple protocol for sending data, like HTTP or even plain text, but you want this data to be kept secure. One of the nice things about embedded Linux is that you can perform all the configuration work to use IPsec on a pair of desktop machines and transport those configuration files to the embedded target. This is possible because when you create an embedded Linux system, you can use the same software that is running on the target on the desktop used for development, making it an ideal platform for emulating your target hardware.


Source of Information : Pro Linux Embedded Systems (December 2009)