[cap-talk] Avoid overconfidence (was: Any hope in RSA 2008?)

[Bill Frantz]

erights at gmail.com (Mark Miller) on Saturday, April 5, 2008 wrote:

>The other interesting data point is the KeyKOS line of operating
>systems. The KeyKOS kernel may very well be the most robustly secure
>general purpose operating system kernel to be deployed commercially.
>(I would be interested to see if anyone can offer counter-examples.)
>However, Eric Northup did find a minor security bug in the KeyKOS
>kernel design many years later. Shap and Charlie are of course working
>towards even more carefully constructed successors, with Shap hoping
>for a machine-checked proof of the Coyotos kernel implementation.

Can some one describe Eric's attack, or point to a description?

For other highly robust OSs, I would look to the telephone
switches, the Plessey 250 (a capability OS), and the Bell ESS
series for example.

Cheers - Bill

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