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Kaspersky's Exploit-Proof OS Leaves Security Experts Skeptical
CWmike writes "Eugene Kaspersky, the $800-million Russian cybersecurity tycoon, is, by his own account, out to 'save the world' with an exploit-proof operating system. Given the recent declarations from U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and others that the nation is facing a 'digital Pearl Harbor' or 'digital 9/11' from hostile nation states like Iran, this sounds like the impossible dream come true — the cyber version of a Star Wars force field. But on this side of that world in need of saving, the enthusiasm is somewhat tempered. One big worry: source. 'The real question is, do you trust the people who built your system? The answer had better be yes,' said Gary McGraw, CTO of Cigital. Kaspersky's products are among the top ranked worldwide, are used by an estimated 300 million people and are embraced by U.S. companies like Microsoft, Cisco and Juniper Networks. But while he considers himself at some level a citizen of the world, he has close ties to Russian intelligence and Vladimir Putin. Part of his education and training was sponsored by the KGB, he is a past Soviet intelligence officer (some suspect he has not completely retired from that role) and he is said have a 'deep and ongoing relationship with Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB,' the successor to the KGB and the agency that operates the Russian government's electronic surveillance network."
There are a lot of levels of trust. For a machine that doesn't handle anything secret or financial data (including personal), Windows is generally good enough, for all its long history of exploits. Even then, many, many people and organizations use it for things that are secret or financial data anyway. Sometimes they get burned that way. A Mac is (maybe) a little better. Linux is better still.
Then there's a level of trust way out at the extreme end. If the secrets are serious enough, you can't trust the system you built it yourself from source and audited every single line of said source. Since hardly anyone can do that, having it audited and built by people you trust (in the case of the government, the NSA, for example) has to due. If it's even more sensitive, the network, or maybe even the machine, should also be air-gapped.
If you have a sensitive use case such as, oh, I don't know, running centrifuges to enrich uranium, should you trust a binary OS that wasn't built by your people to be either secure against exploits or to not be already trojaned? Of course not. Just ask the Iranians. Or the Russians themselves, who had a little refinery trouble during the cold war because of that.
In such a case, you either want your people writing the code, or at least very carefully auditing every single line of the source, then building the binaries from that code. If you don't or can't, especially in the case of embedded systems, you cannot have any confidence that software is even secure against exploits, let alone that it won't turn on you.
pre-cold war:
USSR-based companies: in bed w/ the USSR government
US-based companies: in bed w/ whoever pays them
post-cold war:
Russian-based companies: in bed w/ whoever pays them
US-based companies: in bed w/ whoever pays them
Right. And I consider my hot and cold water taps in my bathroom to be an operating system.
You are welcome on my lawn.