Jailer - eBPF Mandatory Access Control

Warning: This project is under heavy development and is NOT ready for production use. APIs, policy formats, and behavior may change without notice. Use for testing and experimentation only.

Acknowledgments

Note: This is an independent implementation and is not the same project as Meta's solution. While BpfJailer is functionally similar and inspired by the original idea and design by Liam Wisehart, Justin Nga, Carl El Khoury, Mansee Chadha at Meta, this is a separate codebase developed independently. We extend our gratitude for the vision and foundational concepts that inspired this work.

Community

Jailer is an eBPF-based process jailing system that provides mandatory access control (MAC) for Linux. It tracks processes using BPF task_storage maps and enforces role-based policies on file access, network operations, and process execution.

Features (Current Version)

Feature	Status	Description
Process Tracking	✅ Working	Tracks processes using task_storage BPF map
Socket Enrollment	✅ Working	Processes enroll via Unix socket API
Role-based Policies	✅ Working	Restricted and permissive roles
File Access Control	✅ Working	Block/allow file open operations
Jail Inheritance	✅ Working	Child processes inherit parent's jail
Network Control	✅ Working	Block/allow socket bind/connect
Port/Protocol Filtering	✅ Working	Per-port TCP/UDP allow/deny rules
Exec Control	✅ Working	Block/allow process execution
Path Matching	✅ Working	Dentry walking with cache invalidation
Signed Binaries	🚧 Stub	Binary signature validation (not implemented)
Alternative Enrollment	✅ Working	Auto-enroll by executable, cgroup, or xattr
Daemonless Mode	✅ Working	Bootstrap binary pins programs at early boot
Audit Events	✅ Working	Perf buffer for systemd-journald integration

Nginx demo

Complex demo

Kernel Requirements

Minimum Kernel Version

• Linux 5.11+ (for BPF_MAP_TYPE_TASK_STORAGE support)
• Recommended: Linux 6.1+ (better BTF support)

Required Kernel Configuration

# Check current kernel config
zcat /proc/config.gz 2>/dev/null || cat /boot/config-$(uname -r)

Required options:

CONFIG_BPF=y
CONFIG_BPF_SYSCALL=y
CONFIG_BPF_LSM=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=y

Enable BPF LSM

BPF LSM must be enabled in the kernel boot parameters:

# Check if BPF LSM is active
cat /sys/kernel/security/lsm
# Should include "bpf" in the list

# If not, add to kernel boot parameters:
# Edit /etc/default/grub and add to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX:
#   lsm=lockdown,capability,landlock,yama,apparmor,bpf

# Then update grub and reboot:
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

For Ubuntu/Debian systems, you can also use:

# Create a script to enable BPF LSM
cat > /tmp/enable_bpf_lsm.sh << 'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
GRUB_FILE="/etc/default/grub"
if grep -q "lsm=" "$GRUB_FILE"; then
    sudo sed -i 's/lsm=[^""]*/lsm=lockdown,capability,landlock,yama,apparmor,bpf/' "$GRUB_FILE"
else
    sudo sed -i 's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="\(.*\)"/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="\1 lsm=lockdown,capability,landlock,yama,apparmor,bpf"/' "$GRUB_FILE"
fi
sudo update-grub
echo "BPF LSM enabled. Please reboot."
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/enable_bpf_lsm.sh
sudo /tmp/enable_bpf_lsm.sh

Build

Prerequisites

# Install Rust
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Install build dependencies (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo apt-get install -y clang llvm libelf-dev linux-headers-$(uname -r)

# Install BPF target for Rust
rustup target add bpfel-unknown-none

Build All Components

cd bpfjail

# Build BPF programs
cd bpfjailer-bpf && cargo build --release && cd ..

# Build daemon and client
cargo build --release

Quick Start

1. Start the Daemon

# Run as root (loads config/policy.json if present)
sudo RUST_LOG=info ./target/release/bpfjailer-daemon

Expected output:

[INFO] BpfJailer daemon starting...
[INFO] Loading BpfJailer eBPF programs with libbpf-rs...
[INFO] ✓ pending_enrollments map available for enrollment
[INFO] ✓ network_rules map available for port/protocol filtering
[INFO] ✓ task_storage map created successfully
[INFO] ✓ Program task_alloc attached
[INFO] ✓ Program file_open attached
[INFO] ✓ Program socket_bind attached
[INFO] ✓ Program socket_connect attached
[INFO] ✓ Program bprm_check_security attached
[INFO] Initialized with default roles: restricted (1), permissive (2)
[INFO] Loaded policy from config/policy.json
[INFO] Loaded 5 roles
[INFO] Enrollment server listening on /run/bpfjailer/enrollment.sock

2. Run Security Tests

# Run vulnerability tests WITHOUT jailing (shows attacks succeed)
sudo python3 tests/vulnerable_apps/run_tests.py

# Run vulnerability tests WITH restricted role (shows attacks blocked)
sudo python3 tests/vulnerable_apps/run_tests.py --role 1

# Run specific test
sudo python3 tests/vulnerable_apps/run_tests.py --role 1 --test path

# List available tests and roles
sudo python3 tests/vulnerable_apps/run_tests.py --list

Example output with restricted role:

============================================================
TEST: Path Traversal / Arbitrary File Read
============================================================
Attempting to read /etc/passwd via path traversal...
BLOCKED - Permission denied (BpfJailer blocked file access)

============================================================
TEST: Command Injection
============================================================
Attempting command injection...
BLOCKED - Permission denied (BpfJailer blocked exec)

============================================================
TEST: Reverse Shell / Data Exfiltration
============================================================
Test 1: Reverse shell connection to 127.0.0.1:4444
BLOCKED - Permission denied (BpfJailer blocked connect)

Available Security Tests

Test	Vulnerability	Mitigated By
path_traversal	Arbitrary file read via ../	restricted, isolated
command_injection	Shell command execution	restricted, webserver, isolated
reverse_shell	Outbound connections to attacker	restricted, isolated
ssrf	Access internal services/cloud metadata	restricted, isolated
arbitrary_write	Write to sensitive paths	restricted
crypto_miner	Download + execute + connect to pool	restricted, webserver
privilege_escalation	Read shadow, write sudoers	restricted

3. Manual Enrollment Test

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import socket
import json
import os

# Connect to daemon
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_UNIX, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
sock.connect("/run/bpfjailer/enrollment.sock")

# Enroll with restricted role (ID 1)
request = {"Enroll": {"pod_id": 1, "role_id": 1}}
sock.send((json.dumps(request) + "\n").encode())
response = sock.recv(4096).decode()
print(f"Enrollment: {response}")
sock.close()

# Try to read a file (should be blocked)
try:
    open("/etc/passwd").read()
    print("File access: ALLOWED")
except PermissionError:
    print("File access: BLOCKED")

Policy File

BpfJailer loads roles from a JSON policy file. The daemon searches for the policy file in this order: