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Security Infrastructure

Security Consulting and Cooperative Research

Security Consulting and Cooperative research is a research project funded by DARPA's Information Technology Office (ITO). This page provides the basic project summary information required by ITO for all of its research projects.

Objective:
This task seeks to enhance the knowledge and awareness of security issues of OS researchers conducting research on new OS paradigms with the intent of fostering consideration of security issues earlier in the operating system development cycle than typically occurs. It also seeks to identify collaborative research topics that will help address the security requirements of these new OS paradigm research efforts.

Approach:
TIS is pursuing the creation of synergistic relationships with university operating system and other DARPA-specified research groups to enhance their knowledge of security issues and approaches. It is primarily focusing on the University of Washington, the University of Arizona, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviewing their work in depth. It also stays current on work at the University of Utah and the Oregon Graduate Institute. The intent is to provide TIS security consulting and vision to DARPA new OS paradigm researchers, making them cognizant of security concerns and working cooperatively with them to identify viable approaches to security issues and problems.

Recent 1997 Accomplishments:

• SCCR task staff has established a working relationship with staff on the University of Washington's SPIN project, the University of Arizona's SCOUT project and MIT's Exokernel project. The SCCR task staff has made a thorough and detailed review and analysis of all available documentation from each of these three groups. SCCR task staff has received detailed responses from members of the SCOUT and Exokernel projects.
• SCCR task staff has established a mutually-beneficial working relationship with staff on the University of Washington's SPIN project and is exploring security aspects of the SPIN extensible operating system. Project staff have provided extensive feedback to the SPIN security architects on controversial security-support design elements. A new project has been spun off from this activity that will explore issues and methodologies for extensible operating system security.
• SCCR task staff have been analyzing and critiquing work by the University of Arizona's Scout project with respect their Escorted Scout concept of a "secure" path. Based on this analysis, SCCR project staff have proposed and are exploring the possibility of a more cooperative research relationship between TIS and the Scout project that investigates the utility and completeness of Escort concepts in a target network appliance operating system.
• SCCR task staff have thoroughly reviewed available materials on MIT's Exokernel project and provided detailed comments to project staff on potential security concerns. Discussions with MIT are in a more embryonic stage and are expected to continue throughout the duration of the project. SCCR staff developed and maintain a Security Repository Web page. The Web page contains a variety of important security documents itself as well as hypertext links to external Web pages containing electronic copies of important security literature and references to materials describing new OS paradigm research. The Web page can be accessed by OS as well as security researchers to learn more about security aspects of new OS paradigm research activities.

Current Plan:

• Influence the security architecture of new OS paradigm research projects by reviewing and analyzing their activities as well as providing feed-back on their efforts on a regular basis.
• Develop new collaborative research efforts between TIS and new OS paradigm researchers as appropriate joint research topics become evident. Specific emphasis will be on furthering security discussions and analysis with respect to the SPIN project and developing a more cooperative research relationship between TIS and the Scout/Escort project that explores the utility and completeness of Escort concepts. TIS will also attempt to identify and initiate a collaborative research relationship with the MIT Exokernel project.
• Continue to populate the Security Repository Web page with informative security-relevant papers and documents. Included will be papers and documents in the public domain felt to provide useful information on identification and specification of OS security policy statements and models and current security validation methodology as well as published materials that demonstrate such work in OS or related software development efforts.
• Produce white papers on technical issues relevant to new OS technologies and development methodologies.

Technology Transition:
This task is, itself, primarily a technology transition effort intended to pass security knowledge and insight embodied in the experiences and research activities of the security community on to operating system researchers conducting research on new OS paradigms. Some of this new OS paradigm research will undoubtedly influence the architectures of COTS operating systems utilized by the DoD in the future and it is important that security issues be given due consideration during the performance of new OS paradigm research. To facilitate this technology transition effort, TIS will continue to interact with researchers specified by ARPA and provide security consulting on identified topics of interest. TIS will also prepare papers and reports on topics considered appropriate.