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SUSE Linux Receives EAL3 Certification
prostoalex writes "Reporters from CNet News.com learned that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server received EAL3 certification, which allows it to compete with such certified operating systems as Windows (from Microsoft), Solaris (from Sun), HP-UX (from HP) and AIX (from IBM). Albeit all of the aforementioned OSs have EAL4 certification, Evaluation Assurance Level 3 allows SUSE Linux to be considered for a range of government and military tenders. Red Hat Linux is expected to receive EAL2 certification any time now."
...you're only allowed to install a certain version of Windows 2000, with servicepacks up to a certain number, and one hotfix. No other servicepacks or hotfixes are allowed. Extremely ridiculous, especially when you have a look at how much software comes with SuSE (a lot!) and how much comes with Windows 2000 (virtually none!).
But I'm still waiting for a certificate for some SELinux version. Since EAL4 is the highest level where it's still feasible to build the demanded security into it, hardly any normal "customer" operating system will achieve a higher level. But SELinux has been designed for security since the very beginning, and should be able to reach at least EAL5.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
SuSE/Novell couldn't have pulled this off without technology stolen from SCO. It's a known fact that SCO owns IP on everything that makes linux useful.
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If windows too can have this certification, it is clearly not very high standard. So, actually, this means *nothing*.
Evaluation assurance level 1 (EAL1) - functionally tested
EAL1 provides a basic level of assurance by an analysis of the security functions using a functional and interface specification and guidance documentation, to understand the security behaviour.
Evaluation assurance level 2 (EAL2) - structurally tested
EAL2 provides assurance by an analysis of the security functions, using a functional and interface specification, guidance documentation and the high-level design of the TOE, to understand the security behaviour.
Evaluation assurance level 3 (EAL3) - methodically tested and checked
EAL3 provides assurance by an analysis of the security functions, using a functional and interface specification, guidance documentation, and the high-level design of the TOE, to understand the security behaviour.
Evaluation assurance level 4 (EAL4) - methodically designed, tested, and reviewed
EAL4 provides assurance by an analysis of the security functions, using a functional and complete interface specification, guidance documentation, the high-level and low-level design of the TOE, and a subset of the implementation, to understand the security behaviour. Assurance is additionally gained through an informal model of the TOE security policy.
Soccer Goal Plans
Certificates like this are going to become a real problem for open source software. There's no way a small distribution could get a certificate that costs many thousands of dollars to buy. There's certainly no way a single user who makes changes to his or her kernel could ever hope to achieve this kind of certification.
Hence all the hard work of the kernel developers, who provide their services for free in many cases, cannot be directly recognised. Instead some huge corperation has to come along and sponsor such certification. This just isn't right, IMO.
There's a much bigger issue here though, a threat from the future called Digital Rights Management and NGSCB. Who wants an operating system that will be unable to access secure web services because Microsoft introduces a protocol that requires a DRM-aware application running on a DRM-booted computer? Open source GPL'd Linux will never be able to obtain such certificates without massive corperate sponsorship from IBM, Novell, Redhat or whoever.
Even if it does, changing one line in my kernel and recompiling would invalidate it, locking me out of my legally purchased music and movies, and even things like my e-mail eventually (we're already seeing this with the restrictions that a sender can put on an e-mail in Office 2003. Imagine when this is part of the operating system and not easily circumvented).
Bullshit efforts certification efforts like EAL and NGSCB undermine and threaten open source and play right in to the hands of the major corperations. In today's world, the most important corperation producing operating systems is, you've guessed it: Microsoft!
This sort of thing plays right in to their hands. They're undermining the free work of all the thousands of Linux and BSD developers effectively through the back door: by making open source software an unviable solution under the guise of security. Fuck them.
Does this have anything to do with Novell entering the SuSE scene? Or has this certification been a long time coming? Either way, this is another scratch on the wall of achievements Linux has attained. Most pre Linux UNIX admins have a disdain for Linux zealots, etc who believe that Linux can solve any problem any time, and I'm in the same camp, but with distributions getting certifications like this, Linux continues to progress in promising ways in many fields.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
It tells you that Microsoft spent millions of dollars producing documentation that shows that Windows 2000 meets an inadequate set of requirements, and that you can have reasonably strong confidence that this is the case.
Intersting Document on EL
when OS/2 Warp gets EAL5 next month.
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I'm a sys-admin in the US Army right now. Simply getting this new EAL accredation does not allow the military to install an OS (I don't know about the other agencies). The US military develops a set of security standards (baseline) for any OS that they use on a large scale. With these standards, we use it, without them, we don't. Certain *nix's including Solaris, and Red Hat are used on small scales for specific applications in the military, but this EAL will not allow the US Military any more options until senior leadership determines it neccessary and spends the money to adopt the standards of use and baselines for the operating system. I personally have been begging our head IASO to allow us to use Linux in a few instances, but have been shot down on every attempt for this one reason. I know I would love being able to avoid the weekly windows patches that have to be pushed down to the computers on our network though. The US Military does take InfoSec very seriously though. Although several US depertments have been criticized for a lack of InfoSec (Including Homeland Security), I've never heard of the DoD receiving any such negative rating.
I don't really see anyone on here saying that these specs made SuSE any more secure. The gist of it is that by having this certification, they can now compete for government contracts previously unavailable to them.
Companies have to jump through hoops to get some of these contracts; the requirements may be rediculous, but achieving the requirements to compete for contracts is still important none-the-less.
My company does a lot of professional services with DOD and some other agencies, and it's been a huge pain for me that linux wasn't certified under Common Criteria. If I set up something to demo to DOD that was running on a linux box, because it's easier and works better, it was immediately shot down because it didn't meet their standards. End of discussion. Once you get the certification you can play ball, but until that time you can't do squat. So now that we are in the game, you better believe the introduction of linux in the federal government is going to be a flood. I know of a couple of civillian agencies ready to take the plunge (more often than not replacing Solaris with linux, but some dumping of MS as well), and some DOD R&D has been with linux but not much production stuff is in place -- yet. The three letter agencies are interested, and EAL3 is going to make a big difference there.
SuSE probably hasn't "increased" security to make this happen at all, but simply paid the money and took the time to have one of the evaluating companies perform the certification tests. It described the installation method, the packages to be installed and the way the system would be managed, and the evaluating company ran the battery of tests for level 3 and certified that it passed those tests. Heck, given enough time and money SLES will comply with level 5, and the only thing keeping this from happening is the amount of investment SuSE, Novell and IBM are willing to make for this.
EAL really says nothing about the security of linux based systems, but is says a ton about how receptive governments will be to employing it. This is indeed good news.
EAL-rating only indicates how sure you are the product meets the profile (a set of security requirements). Saying it gets "EAL3 Certification" is like saying "We're now quite sure it does... eh... something"
For example, the Win2000 EAL4 certification was CAPP/EAL4 (Controlled Access Protection Profile). Its description:
It should be obvious that while CAPP is nice to have, it does not mean the system is "secure", even if you'd get EAL7. :-)
I guess this is just one of those "they have - we need it too!" things.
Actually it is even funnier: you can not update/patch your installation without losing the certification. So if an exploit becomes known for your OS you have the choice between either running an uncertified OS or running an OS with known exploits until the patch has been certified (which can take many months).
So in reality certified OSes are less secure than an up-to-date system. But whatever, it's certified.