kernrol

Kernrol is a lightweight, role‑based access control (RBAC) extension designed for operating system kernels. It was introduced in 2017 as part of the Open Kernel Initiative to provide fine‑grained permission handling directly within the kernel space. Kernrol operates by attaching a role identifier to each process and kernel module, allowing administrators to specify permissions at the role level rather than by individual users or file paths. This approach reduces the complexity of traditional discretionary access controls and enhances security by minimizing the attack surface.

The core architecture of Kernrol consists of a kernel module that intercepts system calls and checks the requesting process’s role against a hierarchical role policy table stored in secure memory. Policies are managed via a userspace tool that writes to a protected configuration file. Kernrol supports role inheritance, enabling sub‑roles to inherit permissions from parent roles while retaining the ability to override specific capabilities. It also implements role‑transition mechanisms, allowing processes to dynamically acquire additional roles during execution as long as the transition adheres to the defined policy constraints.

Deployment of Kernrol requires recompilation of the target kernel with the Kernrol module enabled, followed by the installation of the accompanying userspace utilities. The extension has been adopted by several open‑source distributions for embedded systems, where deterministic access control is critical. Experimental evaluations indicate that Kernrol introduces negligible performance overhead—typically less than 1 % in I/O‑bound workloads—while providing a robust, centrally managed permission model that complements existing mechanisms such as SELinux or AppArmor.