Daemon by lead zeros ebook

These policies then get built and distributed as policy modules. Platforms that need access controls for a particular application load the SELinux policy module that defines the access rules for that application. The following diagram shows the building of policy modules. Do not assume that this means they are human-readable: these files are binary files. The consideration here is that SELinux wants to support writing SELinux policies in a number of formats, which it calls high-level languages, as long as it has a parser that can convert the files into CIL.

Marking the binary module formats which in previous SELinux versions were the binary blobs loaded in memory as high-level allows the SELinux project to introduce the distinction between high-level languages and CIL in a backward-compatible manner. There, these modules are ready for administrators to activate them. A policy store contains a single comprehensive policy, and only a single policy can be active on a system at any point in time.

Administrators can switch policy stores, although this often requires rebooting the system and might even require relabeling the entire system relabeling is the act of resetting the contexts on all files and resources available on that system. The active policy on the system can be queried using sestatus an SELinux status as follows:. In this example, mcs is the currently loaded policy store. The system's init system be it a SysV -compatible init system or systemd is generally responsible for loading the SELinux policy, effectively activating SELinux support on the system.

The init system reads the configuration, locates the policy store, and loads the policy file in memory. As we now have a better view of the flow used in policy development and distribution, let's see how Linux distributions can differentiate their SELinux offering.

The most common SELinux policy store names are strict , targeted , mcs , and mls. None of the names assigned to policy stores are fixed though, so it is a matter of convention. Hence, we recommend consulting the distribution documentation to verify what the proper name of the policy should be.

Still, the name often provides some information about the SELinux options enabled through the policy. One of the options that can be enabled is MLS support. The SELinux context will not have a fourth field with sensitivity information in it if this option is disabled, making the contexts of processes and files look as follows:.

To check whether MLS is enabled, it is sufficient to see whether a process context doesn't contain such a fourth field. A value of 0 means disabled, whereas a value of 1 means enabled:. Policy stores that have MLS enabled are generally targeted , mcs , and mls , whereas strict generally has MLS disabled. Permissions such as read, open, and lock are defined both in the Linux kernel and in the policy itself. However, sometimes, newer Linux kernels support permissions that the current policy does not yet understand.

If the Linux kernel supports and checks this permission but the loaded SELinux policy does not understand that permission yet, then SELinux has to decide how it should deal with the permission. We can configure SELinux to perform one of the following actions:.

An SELinux policy can be very strict, limiting applications as close as possible to their actual behavior, but it can also be very liberal in what applications are allowed to do. One of the concepts available in many SELinux policies is the idea of unconfined domains. When enabled, it means that certain SELinux domains process contexts are allowed to do almost anything they want of course, within the boundaries of the regular Linux DAC permissions, which still hold and only a select number of domains are truly confined restricted in their actions.

Unconfined domains are introduced to allow SELinux to be active on desktops and servers where administrators do not want to fully restrict the entire system, but only a few of the applications running on it.

Generally, these implementations focus on constraining network-facing services such as web servers and database management systems while allowing end users and administrators to roam around unrestricted. With other MAC systems, such as AppArmor, unconfinement is inherently part of the design of the system as they only restrict actions for well-defined applications or users. However, SELinux is designed to be a full mandatory access control system and thus needs to provide access control rules even for those applications that aren't the security administrator's primary focus.

By marking these applications as unconfined, almost no restrictions are imposed by SELinux. On a system where unconfined domains are supported, this type will be available:. For a system where unconfined domains are not supported, the type will not be part of the policy:.

Most distributions that enable unconfined domains call their policy targeted , but this convention is not always followed. Hence, it is always best to consult the policy using seinfo. CentOS enables unconfined domains, whereas with Gentoo, this is a configurable setting through the unconfined USE flag.

This will ensure that one SELinux user cannot access the files or other specific resources of another user, even when those users are sharing their data through the regular Linux permissions.

UBAC provides some additional control over information flow between resources, but it is far from perfect. Essentially, it is made to isolate SELinux users from one another. A constraint in SELinux is an access control rule that uses all parts of a context to make its decision. Unlike type enforcement rules, which are purely based on the type, constraints can take the SELinux user, SELinux role, or sensitivity label into account. Constraints are generally developed once and left untouched — most policy writers will not touch constraints during their development efforts.

While checking the output of sestatus , we see that there is also a reference to a policy version:. This version has nothing to do with the versioning of policy rules but with the SELinux features that the currently running kernel supports.

In the preceding output, 32 is the highest policy version that the running kernel supports. Every time a new feature is added to SELinux, the version number is increased. If multiple policy files exist, use seinfo to discover which policy version file is used:. A list of policy feature enhancements and the Linux kernel version in which that given feature is introduced is provided next. Many of the features are only of concern to policy developers, but knowing the evolution of the features gives us a good idea about the evolution of SELinux:.

By default, when an SELinux policy is built, the highest supported version as defined by the Linux kernel and libsepol the library responsible for building the SELinux policy binary is used. Besides the policy capabilities described in the previous section, the main difference between policies and distributions is the policy content itself. We already covered that most distributions base their policy on the reference policy project.

Although the reference policy project is considered the master for most distributions, each distribution has its own set of deviations from this main policy set. Many distributions make extensive additions to the policy without directly passing the policies to the upstream reference policy project.

There are several possible reasons why this is not directly done:. This means that SELinux policies can differ between distributions and even releases of the same distribution. In this chapter, we saw that SELinux offers a more fine-grained access control mechanism on top of the Linux access controls. SELinux is implemented through Linux Security Modules and uses labels to identify its resources and processes based on ownership user , role, type, and even the security sensitivity and categorization of the resource.

We covered how SELinux policies are handled within an SELinux-enabled system and briefly touched upon how policy writers structure policies. Linux distributions implement SELinux policies, which can differ between distributions based on supported features, such as sensitivity labels, the default behavior for unknown permissions, support for confinement levels, or specific constraints put in place, such as UBAC.

However, most of the policy rules themselves are similar and are even based on the same upstream reference policy project. Switching between SELinux enforcement modes and understanding the log events that SELinux creates when it prohibits certain access is the subject of our next chapter.

In it, we will also cover how to approach the often-heard requirement of disabling SELinux, and why doing so is the wrong way forward. Sven Vermeulen sjvermeu on Twitter is a long-term contributor to various free software projects and the author of several online guides and resources, including the Gentoo Handbook.

He got his first taste of free software in and never looked back. Within SELinux, Sven contributed several policies to the Reference Policy project, and actively participated in policy development and user space development projects. In his daily job, Sven is an enterprise architect in a European financial institution as well as a self-employed solution engineer and consultant.

Learn how to configure, automate, orchestrate, troubleshoot, and monitor KVM-based environments capable of scaling to private and hybrid cloud models. A comprehensive guide to securing your Linux system against cyberattacks and intruders. Get started with Docker on your local machine and progress towards deploying useful applications in production with this simplified, practical guide.

About this book Linux is a dominant player in many organizations and in the cloud. Publication date: December Publisher Packt. Pages ISBN In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics: Providing more security for Linux Labeling all resources and objects Defining and distributing policies Distinguishing between policies. Providing more security for Linux Seasoned Linux administrators and security engineers already know that they need to put some trust in the users and processes of their system in order for the system to remain secure.

Labeling all resources and objects When SELinux has to decide whether it has to allow or deny a particular action, it makes a decision based on the context of both the subject who is initiating the action and the object which is the target of the action. Defining and distributing policies Enabling SELinux does not automatically start the enforcement of access. Important note Gentoo, a source-based meta-distribution, distributes SELinux policies as source code, compiled and built at install time, just like it does with other software.

Distinguishing between policies The most common SELinux policy store names are strict , targeted , mcs , and mls. Summary In this chapter, we saw that SELinux offers a more fine-grained access control mechanism on top of the Linux access controls. How does Linux support the different MAC technologies?

What four fields constitute an SELinux context? More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Daemon Daemon, 1. Mar 07, Mario the lone bookwolf rated it it was amazing Shelves: suarez-daniel. You know, wise and responsible preparation and sustainable longtime future planing, especially in politics. Stop laughing! Did anyone notice the parallels between this one published in and Clines published Ready Player One?

Both of these masterpieces blow minds, open completely new perspectives, are unique, and open the world of game literature hybrids, jay! Then it ultimately rocks. The future is in computer games, the perfect culmination of everything that makes art great, music, scripts, and storytelling from movies and literature, art, design, animation, etc. I imagine it especially amazing for the kids and teens that both play and read, that spent hundreds and thousands of hours in their favorite series, both single player and together with friends, not to forget AR, VR, and mind computer interface implants.

Jay, cultural pessimism. On the meta level, there is also this thing of prodigies warning of AI, military experts talking about cyber wars escalating, and extremists using it to kill millions by destroying infrastructure and the question of it it could be WW3 humans vs humans or humans vs machines.

I could talk for hours about AI, technology, algorithms, social networks, internet, MMORPGs, its impact on society and especially comparing how Sci-Fi of different decades dealt with this topic, but I am a master procrastinator. Read much Sci-Fi, cough best literary genre cough, instead to generate your own assumptions and analysis.

View all 6 comments. Oct 27, Kevin Kelsey rated it liked it Shelves: read Daemon delivers on all of these fronts, for better or worse, but it also brings an absolutely huge, entertaining story along with the tropes, and it deals with mostly legitimate technology and science. It touches on some interesting elements of evolutionary biology, as well as social psychology. It also mostly falls apart in the end, opting for a cheap 50 page chase sequence instead of examining the more interesting social themes in any sort of detail, or resolving the overarcing story in any form whatsoever.

Daniel Suarez's Daemon is an amazing story. And I'm not talking about the actual plot; for that, the word "Amazing" would not suffice. No, I am referring to the incredible series of events which are leading up to its publication and release on January 8th. After writing Daemon back in , Suarez faced the uphill battle common to many first-time authors.

Unable to find a buyer, yet confident of the quality of his work, he decided to self-publish. Using print-on-demand, Suarez pumped out a few do Daniel Suarez's Daemon is an amazing story. Using print-on-demand, Suarez pumped out a few dozen copies a month, at the time sporting the pseudonym of Leinad Zeraus, his real name spelled backwards. Eventually the book achieved an underground and vocal following. A tipping point of sorts was reached, and the right people began promoting the book in whatever way they could, people like Craig, of craigslist fame and Rick Klau, at Feedburner now owned by Google.

This network helped boost sales until the bright folks at Dutton publishing realized that a phenomenal author was going ignored. What thrills me about the way this book came to life isn't the underdog-triumphant cliche, it is that the themes within Daemon are eerily germane to its own birthing pains. The premise of this book is that our technological interconnectedness will create as many problems as it solves.

Empowering the little people with cheap processing power and an Internet which can not be regulated nor destroyed is great if you are a first time author trying to get a book out the door; it isn't so good for the rest of us if you are able to steal the identities of others, plan terrorist attacks, or abuse an infrastructure designed for efficiency, but capable of worse. Other authors have probed these questions; Suarez goes one step further. His is an even bigger query: can our current economic and political systems evolve in a way that will handle the increase in individual power, or is a geopolitical revolution going to be required?

If it sounds like heady stuff, it is. But don't worry, you'll have plenty of incentive to chew this fat as you feast on the meaty murder mystery which holds these premises together. Well, maybe "mystery" is the wrong word. You see, Daemon starts with a gruesome death scene and a typical police procedural, but events unfold in a unique manner after just the first few pages.

Very early into our story a man identifies himself to our head detective and confesses to the two murders. Here is the twist: The murderer is the famous billionaire videogame programmer Matthew Sobol; And Sobol died of cancer before these crimes took place! There is no "whodunnit" in Daemon. When you think about it, 'Who? The former is just a name, a character. There is some suspense, sure, but the 'Why' and 'How' of this book make a normal murder mystery seem blase.

The 'Why' is a philosophical revolution. The 'How' is a frightening glimpse of a future managed by machines and programs. The real antagonist in "Daemon" isn't the dead Sobol, though he serves as its figurehead, the real enemy in this book is the titular Daemon, the distributed algorithm that Sobol meticulously crafted and unleashed on the world.

The power of Sobol's Daemon comes from his advances in videogame AI. Sobol created the book's version of our World of Warcraft, which they call "The Gate". This MMORPG not only provides the technical know-how for designing incredibly robust logic trees, it also provides the perfect virtual world for training and recruitment. And the rapt population is the ideal one for a cult of personality to form: Dissatisfied somethings looking for a cause to celebrate, as one of his characters powerfully puts it: This was as far from Main Street as he'd ever been.

This wasn't the tattooed, pierced neo-tribal rebellious bullshit of his generation. This was a quiet demonstration of networked power. This was it. Couple this empowerment with the addictive concept of "leveling" in real-life and you have a recruitment process that Al Qaeda can't match. Look at how XBox gamers compare their real-world "Gamerscores" and trophies, how forum denizens brandish post-counts as proof of actual superiority, or how millionaire doctors can be reduced to clawing at one another for "loot" bags at medical conventions.

The mechanisms that make videogames engaging, addictive, and all-powerful do NOT work on us because of anything inherent in videogames, they succeed because of truths inherent in humanity. Especially for virile males seeking the alpha-male status of ness.

Suarez's grip on this undercurrent is matched by his knowledge of today's leading-edge technology. The book reads like Engadget, Gizmodo, and Wired Magazine rolled up in some military "Janes" articles. This isn't science fiction, it is fiction based on scientific FACT.

In a speech for the Long Now foundation, Suarez recently detailed how some of the advances which power the plot of his novel are in action today. From bots that scour our medical records and approve our loans, to convincing text-to-voice technology, and on to cameras which read the license plates of traffic violators with an automated process which results in an actual ticket being cursed by a real human.

Soon RFID tags will interact with mesh networks that can track everything, all in the name of efficiency and profit, but hackable for more nefarious purposes. This contemporary relevance is why some are already comparing Suarez to Michael Crichton, but I don't think the comparison is fair to Suarez.

Chrichton was great at taking science to its extremes, creating worlds which seemed plausible, yet unlikely. Suarez does something better: He uses a mastery of the micro-technological to posit, with convincing force, a macro-future which seems more inevitable than fanciful.

Which of these is scarier: Reading about a dinosaur chasing your imaginary hero, or putting down a terrifying thriller and seeing another Reuter's article which drags that fiction into YOUR reality?

The former isn't even a close second. For me, Suarez is the new Neal Stephenson. If Stephenson's "Diamond Age" is a glimpse of our world years from now, Suarez is the more-germane prophet of a literal tomorrow.

His particular fiction is as unlikely as any to ever come to pass, but the questions it wrestles with MUST be raised and dealt with by a generation alive today. Daemon 's brilliance is that it combines an engrossing mystery with nerve-splitting action, and yet still raises these heady questions. This mixture creates a novel that you never want to put down, and when you are forced to do so, the implications of its philosophical underpinnings stir your imagination into a frenzy. You don't find yourself perseverating over the precarious situation you left the characters in, you instead find yourself seeing the world around you in a different light.

It is as if a HUD becomes overlayed on your vision, filled with the data and info that Suarez's book illuminates, an experience not unlike that endured by his characters as they are bent to the will of his fictional mastermind, Mathew Sobol. The next time I make a flight reservation by interacting with an imaginary voice that is following a logic tree, a simplified version of the Daemon , it will be with a new, chilling awareness.

Daemon was a perfect storm for me, as a reader. I grew up on science fiction, but I now prefer a realistic thriller. I enjoy the effortless pleasure of reading make-believe, yet prefer thought provoking non-fiction. I am an avid gamer and a worshiper albeit rarely a purchaser of consumer electronics. This novel touched on so many passions, and sated them all. Even when the plot disappointed me at times, it was a devious sham that Suarez teased me with, then made up for it in the end.

Rarely do I put down a great read like I did tonight and have the urge to call friends and family to share the experience with them, but that is how Daemon made me feel. It isn't just a great book; it is an important book. View all 9 comments. When the author tries to be witty, he comes off as conceited; when he tries to impress with his tech-savvy, he sounds as if he's quoting from "Popular Science" magazine. This was the worst book I've read in a while, and I'm not sure whether I want Daniel Suarez to stop writing altogether, or give him c Awful.

This was the worst book I've read in a while, and I'm not sure whether I want Daniel Suarez to stop writing altogether, or give him credit for having nowhere to go but up. View all 38 comments. Jul 27, Lyn rated it really liked it. Very smart, very cool. Matthew Sobol was a billionaire genius who had invented wildly popular and stunningly realistic online games. Poisoned by brain Very smart, very cool.

Poisoned by brain cancer and wasted by chemotherapy, his final days were marred by reclusiveness and mental instability. No one knew how mentally unstable until after his death when a series of bizarre events revealed his detailed and well planned machinations to change the world. A dark net, automated daemon he left behind is making dramatic and dangerous alterations to government, business and society as a whole. Suarez has populated his narrative with an intriguing cast of well developed characters.

Eschewing any one dominant protagonist, the writer moves deftly between perspectives, even following his players into death. This cacophony of omniscience serves his narrative structure well as we follow the malevolent creation of a man gone from this world physically but living on actively through his online creations. Suarez also provides sufficient and cause-and-effect backstories to reveal Sobol's pre-death planning.

While this does at some times get bogged down with overly technical explanations Suarez does a better than average job of both stepping the science down for us knuckle draggers and keeping the pace moving along.

Fast moving, slick Sci-fi with horrific elements, this is a very good read. View all 10 comments. Oct 18, Bradley rated it it was amazing Shelves: fanboy-goes-squee , worldbuilding-sf , transhumanism , shelf , sci-fi.

I've just become a huge fanboy with one book. That's to say I was rightly blown away. To explain. What first seems like a techno-thriller with gamers and programmers and a murderer doing all his murders after his own death by cancer then quickly turns into a social and economical exploration based on the trends we're now facing. This is a fun and complicated story filled with many twists and turns, awesome characters, and a world-changing creation that turns us all into players in a I've just become a huge fanboy with one book.

This is a fun and complicated story filled with many twists and turns, awesome characters, and a world-changing creation that turns us all into players in a world-wide socio-economic game based on distributed network theory and game-development strategies.

You know that little military idea of Game Theory? Why not take it to an All New Level and create for ourselves a Game Of Our Lives, so pervasive a virus and lucrative for all the players that it takes over every level of government, corporation, and home? It's like having the mafia become a super genius living in every computer and taking over everything purely by social hacking.

It's beautiful. I've seen a number of somewhat similar tales grace the page, but most of those are social hacking through social media. This one is a bit more fundamental than that. This one leaves us all alone unless it has something it needs, in conjunction with so many other people-pieces, that when they're put together, create major changes without anyone knowing exactly what was up until it happened.

A computer god or Microsoft Design Strategy. It's gorgeous. And so strange that the novel still keeps up with it's techno-thriller ride, still managing a wonderful story while also exploring the depths of an entirely plausible and scary takeover of the world. I totally recommend this fantastic SF. It is both fun and important for the field. No one is innocent. That's kinda the point. We deserve to be taken over by a computer parasite.

View all 21 comments. If you were someone with more computer knowledge and money than Bill Gates, and you found out you were dying, would you: A Give all your money to charity just in case you can buy your way into heaven. B Indulge in an around the world drinking, drug and sex spree until going out in a blaze of glory by crashing your private jet into an erupting volcano live on CNN. D Devise an intricate high-tech web of infrastructure and computer programs that will carry out your will and launch an Internet scheme that will kill a whole lot of people when your obituary is published.

I loved the premise of this book and thought the first half of it was a fun and original thriller. I was a little disappointed in the second half.

The climax was exciting, but at that point, I thought the technology being introduced began to border on science fiction. Part of the hook of the book for me was the idea that this dead billionaire could rig existing computer programs to carry out a worldwide scheme, and the author made that idea very believable because of the detail he had of current networks.

And even though the tech introduced in the final act is probably on somebody's drawing boards, it took away from the realism built up in the first half. Plus, I didn't like that this is apparently the first book in a series. I wasn't aware of that until I hit the last page, and then there was an ad for the next book. I'll probably read the next one, but I thought I was getting a complete story when I read this one.

Despite my complaining, I still thought it was a very original and interesting book. One of the better thrillers I've read in recent years.

Okay, I'm going with an unpopular opinion here. All while he's streaming it live on the internet. Oh, and it establishes that he does this on a Okay, I'm going with an unpopular opinion here. Oh, and it establishes that he does this on a regular basis.

I get that Suarez is trying to get the point across that this guy is a creep but this was a long and nauseating scene and I really struggled with it. There are better ways to get the point across. This aside, the story itself was interesting and I want to read it. But I can't bring myself to pick the book back up.

Take that opinion as it is, I know that people aren't going to be happy with it. But I think some people will be glad I said something. View all 65 comments. Into the third chapter of this book I had to close it for good. I was very disappointed given its good reviews.

There were a few swear words but as the F-bombs started to land, the Rave parties began, drug dealers started trash talking, prostitutes hit the scene and a date rape began I had to quit, all before chapter 4. This was such a departure from the "computer program gone awry, murder mystery" premise I was totally taken off guard.

I wish there was a content rating for books like there are Into the third chapter of this book I had to close it for good. I wish there was a content rating for books like there are movies. I think I will start rating my books so other readers may know what they are getting into. Please join me in doing so. View all 24 comments. Jun 06, D. Apparently this is first of a series. People try with absolutely no success to stop him. The problem with this book is that all the cards are held by the villains, to the point of absurdity.

Literal absurdity, once they start pulling the Razorbacks in. The heroes exist only to be struck down, and while this might be good as a set-up, an entire bo Apparently this is first of a series. The heroes exist only to be struck down, and while this might be good as a set-up, an entire book of it grows wearying. It's not a bad premise, and there's an especially nice scene where the bad guys are directed almost by a virtual GPS to do a step-by-step process, receiving "experience points" for completion.

The idea of factions as well, and the gamification of real life are interesting ideas that beg for exploration. Yet he wastes time on pointless elaborate deathtrap scenes, and introducing more evil characters than good ones. The daemon has ridiculous power and foresight for a game A. It's a tremendous disappointment to me because the theme needs more than just a typical thriller.

It could be an incredible book if it explored the ideas in it. But now it's just an over-long set up for books two and probably three. Billionaire computer software mogul Matthew Sobol has died and he wants to make sure he leaves behind a legacy. That legacy comes in the form of a daemon, or a computer programing running in the background of every system that has installed his massively popular on-line, multi-player video game.

When news of Sobol's death hits the Internet, the daemon becomes active, creating havoc across the world as it exploits vulnerabilities in computer networks and uses them for its own purposes. Daniel Suar Billionaire computer software mogul Matthew Sobol has died and he wants to make sure he leaves behind a legacy. Daniel Suarez's first novel "Daemon" is a fascinating, compelling and, at times, downright scary story of just how open to attack and manipulation many of our computer networks are.

It may be one thing to think about hackers taking advantage gaps in the security to get free wi-fi Internet access, but it's entirely another to see a home security system run amok, intent on killing anyone who tries to approach Sobol's home and to disable it.

Or seeing how easily the system can manipulate multiple networks to reduce the sentence of a hardened criminal from maximum security prison to a low-security facility and eventually set free in order to facilitate the next step in the daemon's plan. The story of how Suarez's novel went from a self-published story to a major book contract and potential movie deal is one that will give hope to every aspiring writer out there. Suarez got his book into the hands of a target audience and created a buzz for himself that it was impossible for a conventional publisher to ignore.

But the thing is--if "Daemon" weren't a good book, no one would be talking about it. And "Daemon" is that good. This is not a book to pick up at bedtime and think you're going to read a few pages before you head to sleep.

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