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15.8 The MAC portacl Module

Module name: mac_portacl.ko

Kernel configuration line: MAC_PORTACL

Boot option: mac_portacl_load="YES"

The mac_portacl(4) module is used to limit binding to local TCP and UDP ports using a variety of sysctl variables. In essence mac_portacl(4) makes it possible to allow non-root users to bind to specified privileged ports, i.e. ports fewer than 1024.

Once loaded, this module will enable the MAC policy on all sockets. The following tunables are available:

The actual mac_portacl policy, as specified in the security.mac.portacl.rules sysctl, is a text string of the form: rule[,rule,...] with as many rules as needed. Each rule is of the form: idtype:id:protocol:port. The idtype parameter can be uid or gid and used to interpret the id parameter as either a user id or group id, respectively. The protocol parameter is used to determine if the rule should apply to TCP or UDP by setting the parameter to tcp or udp. The final port parameter is the port number to allow the specified user or group to bind to.

Note: Since the ruleset is interpreted directly by the kernel only numeric values can be used for the user ID, group ID, and port parameters. I.e. user, group, and port service names cannot be used.

By default, on UNIX®-like systems, ports fewer than 1024 can only be used by/bound to privileged processes, i.e. those run as root. For mac_portacl(4) to allow non-privileged processes to bind to ports below 1024 this standard UNIX restriction has to be disabled. This can be accomplished by setting the sysctl(8) variables net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow and net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh to zero.

See the examples below or review the mac_portacl(4) manual page for further information.

15.8.1 Examples

The following examples should illuminate the above discussion a little better:

# sysctl security.mac.portacl.port_high=1023
# sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow=0 net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh=0

First we set mac_portacl(4) to cover the standard privileged ports and disable the normal UNIX bind restrictions.

# sysctl security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt=1

The root user should not be crippled by this policy, thus set the security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt to a non-zero value. The mac_portacl(4) module has now been set up to behave the same way UNIX-like systems behave by default.

# sysctl security.mac.portacl.rules=uid:80:tcp:80

Allow the user with UID 80 (normally the www user) to bind to port 80. This can be used to allow the www user to run a web server without ever having root privilege.

# sysctl security.mac.portacl.rules=uid:1001:tcp:110,uid:1001:tcp:995

Permit the user with the UID of 1001 to bind to the TCP ports 110 (“pop3”) and 995 (“pop3s”). This will permit this user to start a server that accepts connections on ports 110 and 995.

Notes

[1]

Due to a bug the security.mac.portacl.enabled sysctl variable will not work on FreeBSD 5.2.1 or previous releases.
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