Chapitre 13. Blocking and allowing applications using fapolicyd

The fapolicyd software framework controls the execution of applications based on a user-defined policy. This is one of the most efficient ways to prevent running untrusted and possibly malicious applications on the system.

The fapolicyd framework provides the following components:

The administrator can define the allow and deny execution rules for any application with the possibility of auditing based on a path, hash, MIME type, or trust.

The fapolicyd framework introduces the concept of trust. An application is trusted when it is properly installed by the system package manager, and therefore it is registered in the system RPM database. The fapolicyd daemon uses the RPM database as a list of trusted binaries and scripts. The fapolicyd RPM plugin registers any system update that is handled by either the DNF package manager or the RPM Package Manager. The plugin notifies the fapolicyd daemon about changes in this database. Other ways of adding applications require the creation of custom rules and restarting the fapolicyd service.

The fapolicyd service configuration is located in the /etc/fapolicyd/ directory with the following structure:

Rules in /etc/fapolicyd/rules.d/ are organized in several files, each representing a different policy goal. The numbers at the beginning of the corresponding file names determine the order in /etc/fapolicyd/compiled.rules:

You can use one of the ways for fapolicyd integrity checking:

By default, fapolicyd does no integrity checking. Integrity checking based on the file size is fast, but an attacker can replace the content of the file and preserve its byte size. Computing and checking SHA-256 checksums is more secure, but it affects the performance of the system. The integrity = ima option in fapolicyd.conf requires support for files extended attributes (also known as xattr) on all file systems containing executable files.