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→Discretionary versus Mandatory Access Controls
There are two broad categories of access controls applied to files and directories:
* Discretionary Access Controls (DACs) - these are access controls that can be set to any value at the discretion of the users or administrators of the computer system.
* Mandatory Access Controls (MACs) - these are access controls that are applied across the entire system in a uniform way, and cannot be individually overridden by the users or administrators. An example of a Mandatory Access Control system is SELinux (security-enhanced Linux), a system originally developed by the National Security Agency of the US Federal Government and now part of the Linux Kernel (via KSM - Kernel Security Models). SELinux uses type enforcement and labelling of both resources (files, network connections) and processes to determine whether a specific process should have access to a specific resource, and to deny access when it does not. SELinux is used in several operating systems, including Android, Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Android.
In this OPS102 course, we will be looking only at DACs.
