Teaching SELinux in Introductory Information Assurance Classes

Students in introductory information assurance courses typically learn about the concepts of least privilege and mandatory and discretionary access control policies[1]. However, without hands-on exercises students are not likely to fully understand these fundamental security building blocks. In this paper we present classroom and lab exercises that use NSA's Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) to teach information assurance lessons. SELinux is included in Red Hat's Fedora Linux distribution and in a variety of other Linux distributions. Although SELinux is growing in popularity, there is limited curriculum available to help orient students to its use. This paper describes lecture topics, in-class exercises and lab concepts that can be used to introduce students to SELinux and, through SELinux, to the fundamental concepts of least privilege and mandatory access control policies.