Casey Schaufler posted an updated Smack patchset based on feedback from the previous posting, "I have broken the Smack patch into the netlabel changes from Paul Moore (1/2) and the Smack LSM (2/2), at Paul's kind suggestion." He added:

"The smackfs symlinks have proven too contentious. I have removed the facility. Al and Alan are correct that the rich set of mount options currently available can handle any of the use cases I was looking at without excessive difficulty."

Smack is the Simplified Mandatory Access Control Kernel, utilizing the LSM framework to implement label-based mandatory access control and slated for inclusion in the upcoming 2.6.24 mainline kernel during the 2.6.24-rc1 merge window.

"Smack is the Simplified Mandatory Access Control Kernel," Casey Schaufler said posting the third version of his patchest. He explained, "Smack implements mandatory access control (MAC) using labels attached to tasks and data containers, including files, SVIPC, and other tasks. Smack is a kernel based scheme that requires an absolute minimum of application support and a very small amount of configuration data." Casey continued:

"Smack is implemented as a clean LSM. It requires no external code changes and the patch modifies only the Kconfig and Makefile in the security directory. Smack uses extended attributes and provides a set of general mount options, borrowing technics used elsewhere. Smack uses netlabel for CIPSO labeling. Smack provides a pseudo-filesystem smackfs that is used for manipulation of system Smack attributes."

Andrew Morton replied to Casy's lengthy description, "I don't know enough about security even to be dangerous. I went back and reviewed the August thread from your version 1 submission and the message I take away is that the code has been well-received and looks good when considered on its own merits, but selinux could probably be configured to do something sufficiently similar." He added, "so with the information which I presently have available to me, I'm thinking that this should go into 2.6.24."