Coyotos, A New Security-focused OS & Language

wap writes "For those who haven't been following the EROS project, it has now migrated to the Coyotos project. EROS, the Extremely Reliable Operating System, was a project to create an operating system whose security relied on capabilities rather than the traditional Unix model of root or non-root. Capabilities allow a rigorous verification of the security of a system, something which is not possible in Unix-style and MS Windows systems. Coyotos is to be a real-world usable implementation of the ideas from EROS, complete with a Linux emulator layer. It also specifies a new language, called BitC which allows the programmer to prove that the code implements certain semantics, thus providing another layer of verifiable security. Could this be the most leet OS and language of 2005?" Another submittor asks how this stacks up against using Systems Management and "standard" OSes.

Comments

Comparison with Multics?

[CodeArt]

How Coyotos compares with Multics? Multics was most secured OS ever created with his multi-ring security architecture and security supported directly in HW.

That's not the right question

[Anonymous Coward]

Any user could encrypt data, leaving it locked forever if the key is lost. That's just the nature of electronic keys. When someone loses a physical key there is always some way to spend enough money to open the safe or whatever. That's not true in the world of encryption. The solution to that problem lies outside of the scope of the OS. Or rather, the Unix/Linux/MS Windows designers decided to put it in the scope of the OS by making certain types of protection non-existant. But that's not a solution to the problem; that's just omitting features which should be there, like giving users good encryption tools for stored files.

forgotten lessons of Ada 83 or too young to know?

[museumpeace]

"...It also specifies a new language, called BitC which allows the programmer to prove that the code implements certain semantics, thus providing another layer of verifiable security...."
Developers, promoters and users of this language should consider the fate of Ada83 language before they invest a ton of effort or money. Yes, it may be strong as Fort Knox but writing software costs money and the language supports provability but does NOT eliminate the need to do up front design and heavy integration testing at the end of a project...Only the proprietors of Fort Knox would consider the cost benefit ratio of such software worthwhile. The rest of us would have to weigh it more carefully. C-derived languages got a lot of code written quickly mostly because they did not encumber the engineer with many considerations beyond the function or behavior and representation of data...the "I'm not going to give you a chance to screw up" approach to programming embodied in Ada does not map well to typical [if somewhat shoddy] coding practices and creates a much steeper learning curve for would-be programmers. I admit I have yet to RTFA but I already have this "here we go again" feeling.