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APPARMOR(7) AppArmor APPARMOR(7)
NAME
AppArmor - kernel enhancement to confine programs to a limited set of resources.
DESCRIPTION
AppArmor is a kernel enhancement to confine programs to a limited set of resources.
AppArmor's unique security model is to bind access control attributes to programs rather
than to users.
AppArmor confinement is provided via profiles loaded into the kernel via
apparmor_parser(8), typically through the /etc/init.d/apparmor SysV initscript, which is
used like this:
# /etc/init.d/apparmor start
# /etc/init.d/apparmor stop
# /etc/init.d/apparmor restart
AppArmor can operate in two modes: enforcement, and complain or learning:
o enforcement - Profiles loaded in enforcement mode will result in enforcement of the
policy defined in the profile as well as reporting policy violation attempts to
syslogd.
o complain - Profiles loaded in "complain" mode will not enforce policy. Instead, it
will report policy violation attempts. This mode is convenient for developing
profiles. To manage complain mode for individual profiles the utilities aa-complain(8)
and aa-enforce(8) can be used. These utilities take a program name as an argument.
Profiles are traditionally stored in files in /etc/apparmor.d/ under filenames with the
convention of replacing the / in pathnames with . (except for the root /) so profiles are
easier to manage (e.g. the /usr/sbin/nscd profile would be named usr.sbin.nscd).
Profiles are applied to a process at exec(3) time (as seen through the execve(2) system
call): once a profile is loaded for a program, that program will be confined on the next
exec(3). If a process is already running under a profile, when one replaces that profile
in the kernel, the updated profile is applied immediately to that process. On the other
hand, a process that is already running unconfined cannot be confined.
AppArmor supports the Linux kernel's securityfs filesystem, and makes available the list
of the profiles currently loaded; to mount the filesystem:
# mount -tsecurityfs securityfs /sys/kernel/security
$ cat /sys/kernel/security/apparmor/profiles
/usr/bin/mutt
/usr/bin/gpg
...
Normally, the initscript will mount securityfs if it has not already been done.
AppArmor also restricts what privileged operations a confined process may execute, even if
the process is running as root. A confined process cannot call the following system calls:
create_module(2) delete_module(2) init_module(2) ioperm(2)
iopl(2) ptrace(2) reboot(2) setdomainname(2)
sethostname(2) swapoff(2) swapon(2) sysctl(2)
ERRORS
When a confined process tries to access a file it does not have permission to access, the
kernel will report a message through audit, similar to:
audit(1386511672.612:238): apparmor="DENIED" operation="exec"
parent=7589 profile="/tmp/sh" name="/bin/uname" pid=7605
comm="sh" requested_mask="x" denied_mask="x" fsuid=0 ouid=0
audit(1386511672.613:239): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open"
parent=7589 profile="/tmp/sh" name="/bin/uname" pid=7605
comm="sh" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=0 ouid=0
audit(1386511772.804:246): apparmor="DENIED" operation="capable"
parent=7246 profile="/tmp/sh" pid=7589 comm="sh" pid=7589
comm="sh" capability=2 capname="dac_override"
The permissions requested by the process are described in the operation= and denied_mask=
(for files - capabilities etc. use a slightly different log format). The "name" and
process id of the running program are reported, as well as the profile name including any
"hat" that may be active, separated by "//". ("Name" is in quotes, because the process
name is limited to 15 bytes; it is the same as reported through the Berkeley process
accounting.)
For confined processes running under a profile that has been loaded in complain mode,
enforcement will not take place and the log messages reported to audit will be of the
form:
audit(1386512577.017:275): apparmor="ALLOWED" operation="open"
parent=8012 profile="/usr/bin/du" name="/etc/apparmor.d/tunables/"
pid=8049 comm="du" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0
audit(1386512577.017:276): apparmor="ALLOWED" operation="open"
parent=8012 profile="/usr/bin/du" name="/etc/apparmor.d/tunables/"
pid=8049 comm="du" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0
If the userland auditd is not running, the kernel will send audit events to klogd; klogd
will send the messages to syslog, which will log the messages with the KERN facility.
Thus, REJECTING and PERMITTING messages may go to either /var/log/audit/audit.log or
/var/log/messages, depending upon local configuration.
DEBUGGING
AppArmor provides a few facilities to log more information, which can help debugging
profiles.
Enable debug mode
When debug mode is enabled, AppArmor will log a few extra messages to dmesg (not via the
audit subsystem). For example, the logs will tell whether environment scrubbing has been
applied.
To enable debug mode, run:
echo 1 > /sys/module/apparmor/parameters/debug
Turn off deny audit quieting
By default, operations that trigger "deny" rules are not logged. This is called deny
audit quieting.
To turn off deny audit quieting, run:
echo -n noquiet >/sys/module/apparmor/parameters/audit
Force audit mode
AppArmor can log a message for every operation that triggers a rule configured in the
policy. This is called force audit mode.
Warning! Force audit mode can be extremely noisy even for a single profile, let alone when
enabled globally.
To set a specific profile in force audit mode, add the "audit" flag:
profile foo flags=(audit) { ... }
To enable force audit mode globally, run:
echo -n all > /sys/module/apparmor/parameters/audit
If auditd is not running, to avoid losing too many of the extra log messages, you will
likely have to turn off rate limiting by doing:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk_ratelimit
But even then the kernel ring buffer may overflow and you might lose messages.
Else, if auditd is running, see auditd(8) and auditd.conf(5).
FILES
/etc/init.d/apparmor
/etc/apparmor.d/
/var/lib/apparmor/
/var/log/audit/audit.log
/var/log/messages
SEE ALSO
apparmor_parser(8), aa_change_hat(2), apparmor.d(5), aa-autodep(1), clean(1), auditd(8),
aa-unconfined(8), aa-enforce(1), aa-complain(1), and <https://wiki.apparmor.net>.
AppArmor 3.0.4 2025-08-15 APPARMOR(7)
Generated by $Id: phpMan.php,v 4.55 2007/09/05 04:42:51 chedong Exp $ Author: Che Dong
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