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PGP Division to Work With NSA on Secure Linux
NAI Labs, a division of PGP Security, just sent out a
press release
announcing that they're "joining with the National Security Agency (NSA) and its other partners to further develop the NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux
(SELinux)
prototype." Wow.
It's actually refreshing to see people like PGP who have traditionally been at the forefront of providing encryption to the masses working with a place like the NSA. This could mean a lot of good things for Joe User. I personally can't think of any company I'd like working with NSA more than PGP.
PGP is just an all around good company, and I'm sure their participation on this project will only make it better for everyone involved.
I really can't see any way in which this could turn out badly!
The Security-enhanced Linux prototype was developed in conjunction with research partners from NAI Labs, Secure Computing Corporation (SCC), and the MITRE Corporation.
This like annoucing that AOL/Netscape is joining up with the Mozilla project to produce Mozilla.
Python
Python
You know, I've really got to hand it to the NSA. Somewhere, deep in that organization, is an individual who is driving this whole SELinux project, and I think it's safe to say that He's got a clue.
Don't think that it wasn't difficult for the NSA to do what we've seen with SELinux. For an organization who's entire history has been built upon the idea that incognito is good, this movement of opening up and embracing the open source community was certainly hampered by the knee-jerk reaction of middle-managers who can't imagine working openly with private companies, much less thousands of developers worldwide.
Bravo, NSA. And bravo, Mr. Man-behind-the-scenes who's making this happen. My hat's off to you.
Previously, we worked on a publicly available implementation of SNMPv3 (first in net-snmp and then from scratch in opensnmp, both of which are BSD copyrighted code).
My next project is targeted to large scale management of IPsec installations, the code for which should also be released to the public (though the popular FreeS/Wan code base won't accept US patches, so we'll probably be instrumenting Cerberus instead; FreeS/WAN's loss I guess, otherwise we might have implemented code for them both).
Working on projects like this is great, because it's typically in the form of "here's a hard problem", now "go solve it" without any mention of "do it this way".
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Say I'm working at the NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it, maybe I break it. I'm really happy with myself, because I did my job well.
But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or in the Middle East and once they have that location they bomb the village where the rebel army is hiding. Fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with, just got killed.
Now the politicians are saying "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area," because they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there getting shot just like it wasn't them when their number got called because they were pulling a tour in the National Guard.
It'll be some kid from Southie over there taking shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from, and the guy that put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, because he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile he realizes that the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies use the little skirmish to scare up oil prices. It's a cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
They're taking their sweet time bringing the oil back, of course, and maybe they took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fucking play slalom with the icebergs. It ain't too long until he hits one, spills the oil, and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic.
So now my buddy's out of work, he can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the fucking job interviews which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is giving him chronic hemorrhoids. Meanwhile, he's starving because any time he tries to get a bite to eat the only Blue Plate Special they're serving is North Atlantic Scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think? I'm holding out for something better.
I figure, fuck it. While I'm at it, I might as well just shoot my buddy in the ass, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard. I could be elected President.
--From "Good Will Hunting" (Matt Damon's character speaking to an NSA recruiter, in a heavy Boston accent)
Stupid me: should have checked the NSA web site for the information.
Hi!
At least this will make it harder for the Micro$oft marketers to ramble on about how Linux is insecure :)
All privacy functions within NSA Linux have been removed or disabled, all Internet traffic is cached at NSA headquarters for your convenience, and nearly-anonymous statistics are recorded about you to improve customer service. Any attempt to circumvent these features will result in quiet, painless death in the middle of the night.
Got Rhinos?
Got Rhinos?
Come on, stop being so damn paranoid. Trust me, you're not nearly as intersting to the government as you might think you are.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Secure Linux -> Penguin in Bondage?
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
It's interesting to note that NAI have been involved for months with the project - see an NSA Press Release from January here.
An interesting techy overview is available from IBM here. I'm a serious NSA-paranoid (in 98 I wrote the rhyme: "Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."), but I for one think that NSA 'hardened' Linux is a VERY good thing....Don't forget that, as well as being dirty spying bastards , the NSA (and the rest of the USG) are the largest consumers of secure computing.
At the moment they pay through the nose for 'hardened' versions of AIX, Solaris, HP-UX etc. They see that Linux is a 'free' alternative and would like to cut costs. They see that Linux isn't secure enough (e.g. would struggle to get c2 rating, let along B*), so they decide to start coding themselves, adding functionality such as MAC.
Rather than keep the changes themselves, the NSA decide to share the source code back with the community - this really embraces the Free Software / Linux philosophy. Any code released will be scrutinized no end - a peer review of the initial code for example uncovered a potential buffer overflow vulnerability.
I appreciate that my comments may not be popular with the ultra-paranoid, but if you can objectively view the facts this development really is a good thing for Linux. Hell, if you don't want to use the changes, then don't apply the diffs.
The bottom line: I strongly support NAI in their efforts to further develop Linux.
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
This (infiltrating the linux community through the prebuilt compiler or even kernel) would actually work to a certain extent with the current Linux community. How many of you are running a home-compiled kernel? [OK, lots] Now keep your hands up if you are running a kernel you comlpiled with a compiler you compiled. [most hands go down.] What kernel were you running when you compiled the compiler? And what compiler did you use on that kernel?
The mechanism for complete infection would not be there, though, since there would be plenty of people and distros out there that would begin to track and maintain the purity of the lineage of their compilers and kernels, but the NSA could get a foothold into the more promiscuous script kiddies community, which they have some incentive to do anyway.
Bingo Foo
---
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Doesn't anybody think before going into hysterics?
Of course not. That is kind of the point of hysterics.
Although they have a reason to want the net to be unhackable, they also have a reason to be the exception. Given the brainpower they have, they could conceivably know something we don't. Beware of algorithms you don't understand.
Milo
Now lets look at other times a joint commercial/NSA endeavor has taken place, DES. The standard was published in January 1977 and no major cryptographic break has been discovered yet save brute force (I hardly consider linear cryptanalysis a real threat).
Personally I am a little more worried about NAI's involvement than the NSA's .
Great, another round of NSA hysterics.
You know what the saddest thing is about this?
Somebody busted his hump to get his boss at NSA to let him work on Linux. Said person then busted his hump even further to get his boss to actually allow the release of the source code. What, you think it was easy to get the NSA to release the source code?
I can only imagine how many levels of authorization this poor guy had to go through to get permission to release the source code. Can you even begin to imagine the hell he went through for our benefit?
And as his reward, this poor soul now gets a bunch of idiots screaming about the NSA trying to break Linux's security. If he ever gets invited to speak at a conference, he'll probably be booed off the stage for his efforts.
Doesn't anybody think before going into hysterics?
If the NSA has to be working with an operating system, I'd prefer it to be Linux. Even if they were to put in back doors, at least the users have the legal right to look at the source code and try to find it and fix it. And I can almost guarentee that anything that has the NSA stamp of approval on it will be rigorously tested by the community, if for no other reason than because it says "NSA" on it.