So you thought you had a pretty secure system, huh? Well, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve checked out the NSA’s “Security Enhanced” version of Linux.
Saturday, September 15th, 2001
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BILL PRIDGEN
The National Security Agency (NSA) and computing go way back. The agency was founded in 1952 with the dual mission of protecting U.S. information systems and producing foreign intelligence information. Since its inception, the NSA has had the unenviable job of producing security standards that will keep all communications of the federal government and military secure.
Given that the NSA has been one of the largest consumers of information technology on the planet, their interest in and use of Linux did not come as a surprise to anyone. However, when the development of an NSA-flavored version of Linux, known as “Security Enhanced” (SE) Linux, was announced, it was something of a surprise. Some were nervous, as the NSA and hackers have come to blows over encryption in the past. However, after public examination of SE Linux, it became clear that the NSA had done some pretty terrific work with the Linux kernel.
What Is SE Linux?
Security Enhanced Linux has the simple goal of managing access to system resources through strong typing and domain control. In English, that means SE Linux (as currently architected) runs a security server inside the kernel that determines what system resources a process has access to. Using a flexible policy definition system,…
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