2.3. RSBAC terminology

The terminology used within the documentation and software may require some clarification. The terminology is used regularly within RSBAC logfiles too. RSBAC makes use of three important concepts: Subjects, Objects and Requests. An instance of an Object is called a Target, object classes are sometimes called Target Types.

An example: a process wants to open the file /etc/passwd. The process has PID 1899 and has loaded the program stored in file '/usr/bin/vi'. Now /etc/passwd is an object of class FILE - or alternately we could say it's a target of target type FILE.

Using the RSBAC terminology we would say that a SUBJECT (the process) with caller_pid 1899 and caller_prog_name vi issued a REQUEST of type READ_WRITE_OPEN for OBJECT (target_type) FILE with tid (target id) /etc/passwd.