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.