Date:   Thu, 27 Jan 2000 14:07:53 -0600
From:   Tom Haigh <tom_haigh@securecomputing.com>
To:     securedistros@nl.linux.org
Subject: Re: NSA funds SCC for robust/secure Linux

Jay Lepreau wrote:

> Over several years our research group at the Univ. of Utah-- the Flux
> group-- collaborated closely with the NSA in integrating flexible
> mandatory access controls into our research OS, "Fluke", with some
> consulting support from Secure Computing.  This extended over several
> years, resulting in the "Flask" system.  That security architecture is
> derived from DTOS, which was developed by the NSA, SCC, and maybe others.
>
> Since September our colleagues at the NSA have been working to transfer
> those concepts into Linux.  According to my discussions with them and the
> content on their project web page
> (http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/fluke/html/linux.html), it is the NSA
> researchers who have actually performed the kernel security modifications,
> and Secure Computing is using that source code-- the working secure Linux
> prototype that Steve Smalley talked about at the November meeting-- as the
> foundation for their work.  (There is certainly need for a lot of
> work above the kernel in this system!) Could we get a clarification
> from SCC or NSA on this issue?
>

As Peter Neumann pointed out, the architecture goes back a long way.  I first
encountered it on the Honeywell Secure Ada Target (SAT) project in the mid
'80s.  We went on to refine it on several later projects,
including LOCK, DTMach, SNS, DTOS, our SecureOS for our Sidewinder firewall,
and a few other IR&D projects.  Depending on how you count, we have done
somewhere between five and nine implementations of the architecture now.

NSA has been involved with TE from the beginning.  They were our customer for
a number of these projects, and the R23 technical team worked very closely
with our DTOS technical team on the project that Jay references.  Since
signing the contract with NSA, R23 has graciously given us access to their
source code, and we hope to carry on a close collaboration with them on this
project, just as we did on the DTOS project. We believe that combining the
collective knowlegede and experience of the two teams will result in a very
solid security solution for us to submit to the Linux community.

As the two teams work together, we will decide what parts of the R23 code to
use as is, what parts to modify, and what to develop anew.  Once the resulting
code is published, we hope a number of other people and organizations will
choose to propose extensions and improvements to it.  We are excited about
this opportunity to contribute what we believe is a solid security solution to
the Linux community, and we look forward to fruitful, stimulating technical
discussions on how to make it better.

>
> Other than that, I'm delighted to see this excellent security
> architecture going mainstream, backed by a major company. Good luck!

Thanks.  I always like to see SCC referred to as a major company.

--Tom

Tom Haigh, CTO
Secure Computing Corp.
2675 Long Lake Road
Roseville, MN 55113

651-628-2738

haigh@securecomputing.com


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