IBM Running Linux On Secure Hardware

Schmad writes: "IBM announced at LinuxWorld today that IBM Research and Cryptographic Appliances have Linux running on FIPS 140 Level 4 hardware. Imagine, Linux running in a totally secure environment! Peter Gutmann, father of the crypto toolkit cryptlib, has some things to say about it here."

Comments

Re:Secure Environment

[David Price]

I believe that, upon intrusion detection, the IBM card zeroizes all its RAM in a secure and non-recoverable fashion. The idea is that you can generate your crypto keys and keep them on the card, never exposing them anywhere outside its secure perimeter. This means that if an attacker gains physical access to your server (by breaking into the machine room or somesuch), even that level of access will be insufficient to recover the key material.

This level of paranoia is appropriate for organizations for whom Crypto is Life (think CAs, credit card companies, banks, big e-commerce houses, etc.)

Re:Mirror- build your own

[Lumpy]

Sounds like a simple PC locked in a safe surrounded by Plastic explosive would be a cheaper option...

It's funny, they spend billions to make a "secure" hardware platform while you only have to spend a few million and common knowlege to make a generic platform secure. -- Put the PC where no-one can get to it, inside a faraday cage, and shoot anyone that comes near it.

pretty darn simple to get a secure computer.