Secure Operating Sytems: was RE: SECURITY Listserv Ins tructions and ParticipationGuidelines

[Adam Getchell <AdamG () HRRM UCDAVIS EDU>]

> Meanwhile, such things like creating a secure operating
> system are being left to Bill Gates ...
>
>
> > Bill Gates says he will devote the
> > resources of this enormous corporation to developing a security
> > operating system.

A reasonably, not perfectly, secure operating system has already been
developed, by a few individuals, for use freely throughout the world:

http://www.openbsd.org/

This is, of course, based upon the work by UC Berkeley's CSRG and the 4.4BSD
kernel, so the ultimate source is/was universities.

This paper also gives a good overview of what is meant by "secure operating
system":

"The Inevitability of Failure: The Flawed Assumption of Security in Modern
Computing Environments" by Loscocco, Smalley, Muckelbauer, Taylor, Turner,
and Farrell of the National Security Agency.

http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/inevit-abs.html

The Trusted Path Execution mechanism referred in the NSA paper has been
implemented in OpenBSD using stephanie:

http://www.packetfactory.net/projects/stephanie/

***************************
*      Adam Getchell                         AdamG () hrrm ucdavis edu
*      System Architect/Programmer           (530) 752-1584
*      Human Resources Information Systems   http://www.hr.ucdavis.edu/
***************************
"Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability in the opponent." -- Sun Tzu

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