From: InfoSec News (isnC4I.ORG)
Date: Mon Apr 09 2001 - 22:08:23 CDT

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http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5551168.html?tag=mn_hd

By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 9, 2001, 3:45 p.m. PT

The National Security Agency, the electronic snooping arm of the U.S.
government, has enlisted computer security company Network Associates
to help create a version of Linux that's less vulnerable to attack.

The NSA awarded the two-year, $1.2 million contract to the PGP
Security division of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, Network
Associates announced Monday. The company will add more security
features into a version of Linux the NSA already has paid for called
"Security-Enhanced Linux" (SELinux).

Network Associates also will help present the changes to the community
of programmers who collectively produce Linux under the open-source
method.

The NSA is interested in a version of Linux that is kept more secure
by restraining programs so they have only the bare minimum of
privileges required to do their jobs. That would make it harder for
attackers to take advantage of "buffer overrun" or "format string"
vulnerabilities.

The NSA already has worked with Secure Computing to develop SELinux.
It's also working with VMWare to create software that will divide a
single computer into partitions so, for example, one person working on
unclassified work couldn't get access to another's top-secret work.

Network Associates will modify Linux so it can be used to accommodate
different security policies, the company said.

The changes will be released to the open-source community, Network
Associates said. The General Public License that governs Linux
requires that anyone who distributes changes to the heart of the
operating system must publish those changes.

Since 1991 when Linus Torvalds began work creating Linux, a clone of
the Unix operating system, it has gained in popularity and now is a
key part of newer businesses such as Red Hat and behemoths such as
IBM.

Because Linux may be freely obtained and modified, it's become a
popular foundation for experimentation, from trying out new Internet
standards to creating cheap supercomputers.

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