MACLABEL(7)

💅 MACLABEL(7) 💅

ok so this is the maclabel page, from the Miscellaneous Information Manual — yes bestie, we're in the misc section and it's lowkey iconic 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

maclabel — the Mandatory Access Control label format, aka the lil string that decides who gets to touch what 🔐

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so listen. if Mandatory Access Control (that's MAC for short, not the computer brand, don't @ me) is enabled in the kernel, then on top of the traditional credentials, every subject and every object gets its own MAC label. and when I say subject I mean typically a user or a socket 👀, and when I say object I mean a file system object, a socket, etc. etc. The MAC label carries all the subject-specific or object-specific info that a MAC security policy needs in order to enforce access control on that subject/object. it's giving bouncer at the club fr fr 🚪✨

The format for a MAC label is defined like this, no cap:

policy1/qualifier1,policy2/qualifier2,...

so a MAC label is literally: a policy name, then a forward slash, then the subject or object's qualifier, and then optionally a comma plus one or more additional policy labels. that's the whole vibe check 💫

For example (and these are exact, don't mess with them):

biba/low(low-low)
biba/high(low-high),mls/equal(equal-equal),partition/0

see how the second one is just stacking labels like accessories? obsessed. 💅

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

the whole friend group, go say hi:

• mac(3)
• posix1e(3)
• mac_biba(4)
• mac_bsdextended(4)
• mac_ifoff(4)
• mac_mls(4)
• mac_none(4)
• mac_partition(4)
• mac_seeotheruids(4)
• mac_test(4)
• login.conf(5)
• getfmac(8)
• getpmac(8)
• ifconfig(8)
• setfmac(8)
• setpmac(8)
• mac(9)

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⭐ HISTORY ⭐

MAC first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0 — a whole era, tbh 🕰️✨

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

This software was contributed to the FreeBSD Project by NAI Labs, the Security Research Division of Network Associates Inc. under DARPA/SPAWAR contract N66001-01-C-8035 (“CBOSS”), as part of the DARPA CHATS research program. legends, honestly 🫶🔥

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and that's the page bestie!! 🍓 this lil beauty is from the Debian build, dated October 25, 2002 — yes she's vintage, and yes she still ate 💖 mwah, go read mac(3) next, iykyk 💜🧚