Systrace 1.6d review

The policy is generated interactively

License: BSD License File size: 206K Developer: Niels Provos

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The policy is generated interactively. Operations not covered by the policy raise an alarm, allowing an user to refine the currently configured policy.

For complicated applications, it is difficult to know the correct policy before running them. Initially, Systrace notifies the user about all system calls that an application tries to execute. The user configures a policy for the specific system call that caused the warning. After a few minutes, a policy is generated that allows the application to run without any warnings. However, events that are not covered still generate a warning. Normally, that is an indication of a security problem. Systrace improves cyber security by providing intrusion prevention.

Alternatively, policies can be learned automatically. In many instances, the automatically learned policies can be used for sandboxing immediately. Sometimes, minimal manual post-processing is necessary.

With Systrace, untrusted binary applications can be sandboxed. Their access to the system can be restricted almost arbitrarily. Sandboxing applications that are available only as binaries is only sensible, as it is not possible to directly analyze what they are designed to do. However, constraining the system calls that large open-source applications are allowed to execute is useful too, as it is very difficult to determine their correctness.

System call arguments can be rewritten dynamically. This effects a virtual chroot for the sandboxed application. It also prevents race conditions in the argument evaluation.

Here are some key features of "Systrace":
Confines untrusted binary applications.
Interactive Policy Generation with Graphical User Interface.
Supports different emulations:
GNU/Linux, BSDI, etc..
System Call Argument Rewriting.
Non-interactive Policy Enforcement.
Remote Monitoring and Intrusion Detection.
Privilege Elevation: Add-on capabilities.

Requirements:
libevent

What's New in This Release:
Translations were added for new system calls under OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Linux.
Zombies are correctly reaped when they get reparented under ptrace by allowing waitpid to execute in more cases.