$1.2M DARPA Contract for FreeBSD Security

NAI Labs has been awarded a $1.2 million contract for FreeBSD security development. The main focus for this contract is to develop the TrustedBSD security extentions. The name of the project is CBOSS, (Community Based Open Source Initiative), led by Robert Watson and Lee Badger, and such developers as Kirk McKusick, Poul-Henning Kamp, Jonathan Lemon, and Eivind Eklund will work on it as subcontractors. I am excited over the news; the press release can be found at NAI Labs' CBOSS website.

Comments

Sounds good

[ageitgey]

All slashdot open-source bias aside, this is the perfect example of how the government can use our money to benefit as many people as possible. There is nothing wrong with selling your software, but open-source is a great way to make best use of public money since the public benefits as well as the goverment agency.

I've got no problem with Microsoft selling to Coke or Ford or whomever, but I think the government should take advantage of and improve public property whenever possible. This is the IP equivelent of public parks that everyone can enjoy and share. Instead of using our taxes to further the causes of private companies, we can use our taxes to improve software for everyone.

The future of root

[LinuxDeckard]

In the introduction white paper section II.b (Fine-grained System Capabilities), they describe the root account as being a significat source of risk (if you're rooted, you're owned). The solution under TrustedBSD is to delegate the root responsibilities to various executables. I'm not sure what this solves if root still has access to these new executables. Any ideas on how this will be accomplished?