On the formalization, design, and implementation of component-oriented access control in lightweight virtualized server environments

Abstract

In modern day operating systems, such as Linux, it is now possible to handle a large number of concurrent application services on a single server instance. Individual application components of such services may run in different isolated runtime environments, such as chrooted jails or application containers, and may need access to system resources and the ability to collaborate and coordinate with each other. We formalize the access control requirements of such components; our model allows access to OS resources on a need-to-know basis and also controls collaboration and coordination among service components running in disjoint containerized environments under a single Linux OS server instance. Such access control is managed and enforced through a Linux Policy Machine (LPM) that acts as the centralized reference monitor and provides a uniform interface for accessing system resources and requesting application data and control objects. We present the design of the LPM and provide an implementation to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.