Linux Security Module
lastmod 2026-11-10created 2019-10-222 edits
Linux Security Module (LSM) is a framework that lets access control policies be plugged into the Linux kernel. It places hooks throughout kernel operations such as opening files, creating processes, and accessing sockets, and lets each security module decide at those hooks whether to allow the operation. Mandatory access control implementations such as SELinux, AppArmor, Smack, and TOMOYO all run on top of this framework, and it also supports stacking, which layers multiple modules, and BPF LSM, which writes policies in BPF.