Apparmor and its usage

Whats is AppArmor

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AppArmor is a Linux kernel security module that allows the system administrator to restrict programs' capabilities with per-program profiles. Profiles can allow capabilities like network access, raw socket access, and the permission to read, write, or execute files on matching paths. AppArmor supplements the traditional Unix discretionary access control(DAC) model by providing (mandatory access control) (MAC). It was included in the mainline Linux kernel since version 2.6.36 and its development has been supported by Canonical since 2009. It is available by default on Ubuntu and Suse distributions. AppArmor relies on paths instead of inodes, which are used by another similar security mechanism SELinux. Apparmor uses rules, which are combined into profiles for every process you want to restrict by it. These profiles can be run in "enforce" or "complain" modes. To generate profile you can run it with AppArmor in profile mode. While enforced profile will disallow any restricted activity, profile ran in complain mode will still allow program to do what was intended, but log this violation in logfile.

AppArmor features

AppArmor can restrict following things

• file access (read, write, link, lock)
• library loading
• execution of applications
• coarse-grained network (protocol, type, domain)
• capabilities
• coarse owner checks (task must have the same euid/fsuid as the object being checked) starting with Ubuntu 9.10
• mount starting with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
• unix(7) named sockets starting with Ubuntu 13.10
• DBus API (path, interface, method) starting with Ubuntu 13.10
• signal(7) starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
• ptrace(2) starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
• unix(7) abstract and anonymous sockets starting with Ubuntu 14.10

AppArmor commands

Check status

 apparmor_status 

Load profile

 cat /etc/apparmor.d/profile.name | apparmor_parser -a

Reload singe profile

  cat /etc/apparmor.d/profile.name | apparmor_parser -r

Reload all profiles

 systemctl reload apparmor

Disable profile

  ln -s /etc/apparmor.d/profile.name /etc/apparmor.d/disable/
  apparmor_parser -R /etc/apparmor.d/profile.name

Enabling disabled profile

 rm /etc/apparmor.d/disable/profile.name
 cat /etc/apparmor.d/profile.name | apparmor_parser -a

Run profile in comlpain mode

 aa-enforce /path/to/program

Disabling AppArmor

Open /etc/default/grub file and change or add this line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="apparmor=0". Then run update-grub2 and restart your PC.

Creating new profiles

There are two ways of profiling. First one is called Stand-Alone profiling and second one is Systematic profiling.

• Stand-alone is more fit if oyu want to create profile for one application, however setbacks are, that you need to keep running the profiling process whole time, while you are creating profile.
• Systematic profiling is meant for multiple processes, and you can restart server and programs while still profiling.

Stand-alone profiling

First you probably need to install additional package by runing apt install apparmor-utils.

For example, lets try and profile Vsftpd. After installing it, this command needs to be run first aa-genprof /usr/sbin/vsftpd. It will stay in monitoring mode. Then in other terminal window restart or start Vsftpd daemon by running systemctl restart vsftpd. After that just proceed with casual tasks. Connect with local user to FTP, upload, download, create and delete files and directories. Also create file in /tmp. After doing this, switch to first terminal window and push S for (S)can system log for AppArmor events. Aa-genprof will then asks a couple of questions about actions what vsftpd did and you can either approve or disable them, alone with some more options. For example this rule /home/user1/* rcould look very narrow and ftp will not work properly if your system have more than one user. You can push E for Glob with (E)xtension and it will offer you wider rule that will allow writing in /home not /home/user1/ directory only.