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Schwartz Comments On NSA/Sun OpenSolaris Collaboration
sean_nestor writes to mention that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz took a bit of time recently to comment on last week's announcement that Sun Microsystems would be partnering closely with the NSA for security research surrounding OpenSolaris. Rather than the typical loads of legalese and confidentiality agreements Sun and the NSA are claiming that this move is more about the NSA joining the OpenSolaris community than anything else. I guess only time will tell.
"Open" is the keyword here. It's not like they are going to be submitting binary patches or that we can't review the source code they submit.
I'd also like to point out the SELinux project, will you abandon Linux now too?
You should really adjust that tin foil, it's messing with the signals that are already inside your head.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
It takes me forever to pull out SELinux when I deploy a new Linux server and now I have to worry about what the hell OpenSolaris is doing instead of running an application or whatever its purpose is supposed to be doing.
Doesn't anyone else see MAJOR privacy and 4th amendment violations when government and business get into bed with each other?!?! I do not want any agency in the US government helping Sun, Microsoft, and or anyone else with "securing" their products. There is only one reason why the NSA is interested in OpenSolaris and it has nothing to do with "securing" it.
Helping a Vole out of a hole
By Nick Farrell: Tuesday, 09 January 2007, 2:26 PM
THE USA GOVERNMENT'S cryptologic organisation, the National Security Agency, has admitted that it is behind some of the security changes to Microsoft's operating system Vista.
According to the Washington Post, the agency which was once so secret that it was jokingly referred to as 'No such Agency' has admitted making 'unspecified contributions' to Vista.
Tony Sager, the NSA's chief of vulnerability analysis and operations group, told the Post that it was the agency's intention to help everyone these days.
The NSA used a red and a blue team to pull apart the software. The red team posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary" to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. The Blue team helped Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration.
Vole said that it has sought help from the NSA over the last four years. Apparently its skills can be seen in the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.
The assistance is at the US taxpayers' expense, although the NSA says it all makes perfect sense. Not only is the NSA protecting United States business, its own Defense Department uses VoleWare so it is in the government's interest to make sure it is as secure as possible.
Microsoft is not the only one to tap the spooks. Apple, with its Mac OSX operating system, and Novell with its SUSE Linux also asked the NSA what it thought of their products. The NSA is quite good at finding weapons of mass destruction that are not there.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If you read between the lines, and know anything about SELinux (also orginating inside the NSA), you come away with the impression that this is SELinux ported to OpenSolaris. Since the code will be as open as the rest of the OpenSolaris code, it doesn't sound like that big a deal to me ...
With Linux don't you have the source? So how can your 4th amendment rights and privacy be violated when you can just remove the stuff? Maybe the businesses are trying to make money and the government has deep pockets so they secure their software so the government will spend money on their products. It is just capitalism at work. The world is full of smart people, I am sure the NSA can not slip some nice little "feature" into an operating system and someone will not find it. Maybe just maybe the NSA is trying to make sure their shit is secure...your privacy is just fine. If you do not think so why don't you analyze it and report to slashdot how the NSA has inserted code that violates your rights. We all would love to know.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
On the NSA side, having many eyes analyzing their code has both risks -- if holes are found in their security model or implementations, potentially these could be exploited by the blackhat types and benefits -- more weaknesses discovered faster and holes plugged so that the blackhat types get closed out of NSA type stuff faster than they can do it with closed implementations.
But neither of these scenarios will let NSA somehow increase their "big brother reach" because with many eyes comes near perfect scrutiny that would quickly out any code back-doors, etc. that would be usable by the white hats or the black hats.
On the whole I find this to be a cool/worthwhile endeavor on Sun's part and look forward to it's efforts being leveraged into all of the Open Source stuff that can use it.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
All this collaboration will do is create 5% really good gems, and 95% throw away code--and it will take 4yrs to see any result knowing how fast both organization move.
I like openSolaris, but I unless Nexenta gets it butt in gear, Linux will win hands down on the usability front.
I suspect what really is going on is that the NSA doesn't trust closed Microsoft code and wants to make sure there are secure open source operating systems they can use (they may get access to the MS codebase, but I doubt they'd be able to set up their own secure repository and verified build).
Remember, sane people mistrust the NSA. Paranoid people work for the NSA.
One of the NSA's directives is for helping provide security for the rest of the gov, as a bit of an expert group. Securing OSs for gov use falls in that category.
Your NSA friends can probably tell you they're working for the NSA. They just can't say doing what.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Spoken like a conspiracy theory nut. Distrust of the government is a very good thing. Blindingly thinking the government is out to get you is as stupid as blindingly believing it's out to help you. In this case, SELinux is completely open and out there for you to see.
It takes teams of people to understand the ins and outs of large sums of source codeDo you think teams of people haven't gone through the SELinux code with a fine-tooth comb? Security researchers were all over that, when the code was first given to the community in 2000. It wasn't placed in the mainline kernel until 2003. There has been plenty of time for people to find echelon-type code in there. Not to mention it would be pretty stupid to put that type of code in the open, as it would destroy people's confidence in the NSA and allow people who looked at the code to use these hooks for their own benefits, thus potentially using it against the US Government itself, since several departments including the DoD and the NSA itself use it.
I have hacked the kernel and made changes but I do not understand the entire thing, not one person could build an OS like Linux and deploy it without community support.No, but I guarantee you that if you submitted your kernel changes to the mainline tree, several people above you looked at those changes and vetted it as worthwhile for inclusion. And you can bet every one of those people don't understand the entire kernel, but sure as hell understood the part of the kernel you were messing with. And they understood what your code was doing. Anyone can make changes to the linux code, but it's not an open source repository that everyone submits to, there are specific processes to get things accepted to the main tree.
The government is like a sexually transmitted disease, easy to catch and hard as hell to get rid of.The solution to sexually transmitted diseases is to be vigilant and careful, not to stop having sex. If all humans become so afraid of sexually transmitted diseases that they quit having children humanity would be gone. Similar fate would befall you in total anarchism. Be wary of your government, and require it to be open. Please don't bitch about the good and open things the government has done, we need to encourage more of that.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
The NSA is a huge organization, does a lot of different things, and as a result, it can--like a lot of large companies and agencies--seem a bit schizophrenic.
NSA employees have made significant contributions to Linux already, and there have been the usual arguments over design choices that any such project faces, but there's never been the smallest suggestion of any subterfuge.
OpenSolaris's work is conducted in the light of day, and I doubt the NSA's participation will be any more nefarious there.
Part of the NSA's mandate seems to be to improve the security of everybody's operating systems. That's work that can benefit all of us, is exactly the sort of work that a "national security agency" *should* do, and we should encourage it, while still condemning the projects we disapprove of.
1. The NSA wouldn't announce that they are trying to make Linux more secure and then slip in back doors. Heck they submit there patches for all the world to see. If they tried it the finger would point right back at them. And don't you think that everybody and their dog will look at the NSA patches just to check them for such a stupid move?
2. If the NSA wanted to pull something like that they would simply create a person and start adding code that ISN"T under their name!
Hate to tell you but this Internet thingy you are using was created in large part by the government spooks that you fear so much.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Well, like I said, I encourage the paranoia. But it must be tested by realism.
I would wait before introducing any OS into a secure critical path until after it has had the maximum review I can afford to wait for. Thre's no reason to believe that the NSA or other spooks haven't had their sticky fingers all over the insides of any popular OS, especially a closed one in so many sensitive operations like Solaris has been for so many years. Microsoft goes without saying, but there's no reason that say NetBSD contributors couldn't have been "agents" (witting or otherwise) of NSA or other spook tricks to insert code in that OS that often runs inside secured perimeters. So since the source for OpenSolaris is open for review, that seems like the most securable approach. Public announcements of the NSA participation will even encourage new scrutiny by others who compete directly with the NSA and its "customers", so I'd expect if, for example, the German government and HSBC uses the product that it is trustworthy.
So I'm not advocating an immediate adoption of the "NSA OpenSolaris". I'd say it's worth waiting maybe 6-8 months after release to analyze (and participate in) the open security analysis of the result. But even that is overestimating the safety of the position from which one is moving, because the NSA (and other untrustworthy actors) has had plenty of time to taint previous versions, just without admitting it. And this is true of any OS. If we want to use an OS in the world where NSA and others can manipulate with giant, secret budgets, teams of extremely smart and even evil people, and immunity from any law, we want their operations to go on as much as possible in the clear public view.
If we were talking about closed source, or binaries only, or some code so complex and hard that there aren't any qualified analysts for it outside the NSA, then we could have more grounds for worry. But since the code is open, and is under review by competing interests, it seems likely to produce an OS that's both secure and trustworthy. And it also invests the NSA in doing things in the open, which is the way to keep us all the most secure in every way. My paranoia makes me fear the alternatives more.
--
make install -not war
I'll be the first to yell out at things like warrantless wiretapping, but believe it or not, even at NSA they use Windows and Linux/Unix on their hardware. It's in their best interest and the interest of their mission (as a consumer of said OSs) to make sure that those OSs are as secure as they can be. And some of the smartest security researchers on the planet work for NSA. So why not?
One of the NSA's growing missions is also to secure the electronic interests of the United States and its citizens. That includes doing anything they can to help secure the infrastructure of US interests. All our banks and national financial stability rely heavily on the security of computer systems. If they can't benefit from this added security, what's the point of securing a defense system if someone can hack into your federal bank system and make you lose billions?
So things like an overall more secure Solaris or Linux (or even Windows Vista) benefits everyone, including the electronic interests of the citizens of the USA, who the NSA also serves. Remember, they ARE a government agency (an occasionally evil one, though most of them do evil things every now and then.)
that's hogwash. you don't use a compiler that you don't have the sources to.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This isn't news. .GOV helped Sun build Trusted Solaris back in the day (they also helped Hewlett-Packard develop Trusted HP/UX). The government isn't doing this stuff to be evil, and I know my saying, "Don't be paranoid," won't make anyone any less paranoid -- but really the government needs certain security features to solve its problems (such as Cross-Domain information sharing), and the commercial industry simply doesn't need that stuff. Or, at least, it doesn't think it needs it. The only way for the government to get the OS features it needs is to work with a company directly to do it, or use an open source alternative.
.GOV decided to work with companies. Like I said, Trusted Solaris, Trusted HP/UX, and some others that I can't think of, were created. Along came Stephen Smalley and his FLASK security architecture. Linux was the first and easiest place to implement it, and the NSA spearheaded the project. You can imagine that Sun (the only vendor of an OS that supported multi-level data just a few years ago) wasn't all that happy -- .GOV pretty much promised Sun, "If you build and maintain your trusted OS, we'll keep buying licenses and hardware."
Originally,
Now that isn't so. It seems only fair to help Sun and the Solaris community in the same way that the government has helped RedHat and the Linux community: provide some resources and some know-how to make the OS do what the government wants, so as to not hand RedHat a huge government-assist...the government basically wants competition here. As a taxpayer, I can't say that I'm complaining...
Reid
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,