Implementation of LSM-Based RBAC Module for Embedded System

Abstract

Security requirements of the embedded system which were not considered when the embedded system is independently deployed are being increased because the embedded system is connected to an internet. Accordingly, the coverage of the system security is being expanded from the general server to the embedded system. And it is not enough that the embedded system supports only its inherent functions and it becomes the essential element to provide the security function to the embedded system. This paper implements the Role Based Access Control (RBAC) module which is designed using the Linux Security Module (LSM) for the embedded system. RBAC allows security management to be administrated easily and LSM is a lightweight, general purpose, access control framework for mainstream Linux kernel that enables many different access control models. The combination of RABC and LSM properties is very suitable for one of security solutions of embedded system because of the simplicity and flexibility of RBAC and a lightweight loadable mechanism of LSM. And we show the performance of our implementation that has very small overhead for the intended processing and is acceptable.