Protection of Components Based on a Smart-Card Enhanced Security Module

We present in this paper the use of a security mechanism to handle the protection of network security components, such as Firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems. Our approach consists of a kernel-based access control method which intercepts and cancels forbidden system calls launched by a potential remote attacker. This way, even if the attacker gains administration permissions, she will not achieve her purpose. To solve the administration constraints of our approach, we use a smart-card based authentication mechanism for ensuring the administrator's identity. Through the use of a cryptographic protocol, the protection mechanism verifies administrator's actions before holding her the indispensable privileges to manipulate a component. Otherwise, the access control enforcement will come to its normal operation. We also show in this paper an overview of the implementation of this mechanism on a research prototype, developed for GNU/Linux systems, over the Linux Security Modules (LSM) framework.