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NSA Securtity Enhanced Linux - good/bad?

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by natas

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I was reading about the NSA's Security Enhanced Linux and was wondering how secure it acctually is. I was also wondering what other "features" the NSA put in that might be used by them for monitoring purposes. Has anyone used this and evaluated it? Has anyone decompiled their kernel to see what has acctually changed? According to the web site they used the 2.2.12 kernel with Red Hat 6.1 and can only currently support x86 systems.

The web site where I read about this is:
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.html

Obviously we all like the idea of building a more secure system, but I'm a bit hesitant about using a kernel modified by the NSA.

Tell me what you think.
Thanks
Robert Thanepohn

5 replies

by orgnac

"decompiled their kernel"?? If you are concerned about security you should never use a pre-compiled kernel. Get the source, read it, compile your own kernel, test it.

The NSA has made extensions to the kernel that are unlikely to get rolled into the standard Linux kernel. I don't think anyone, even the NSA, really expects people to use selinux in a production environment. Rather, it exists as a demonstration of some ideas that the the NSA has implemented. It is the working model counterpart to some academic work that the NSA has published on operating system security. It is out there so people can read the source, play with it, test it, take ideas from it, improve on it, but I wouldn't use it in a production environment, especially if I didn't trust the NSA. It is, after all, a new effort.

For a different approach to a security-enhanced Linux that has a little bit of history behind it check out Trustix at http://www.trustix.com/

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