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Schwartz Comments On NSA/Sun OpenSolaris Collaboration

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Mar 28, 2008 01:01 PM
from the color-me-skeptical-for-now dept.
Sun Microsystems Security
sean_nestor writes to mention that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz took a bit of time recently to comment on last week's announcement that Sun Microsystems would be partnering closely with the NSA for security research surrounding OpenSolaris. Rather than the typical loads of legalese and confidentiality agreements Sun and the NSA are claiming that this move is more about the NSA joining the OpenSolaris community than anything else. I guess only time will tell.
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Submission: NSA To Collaborate With Sun on OpenSolaris Project by sean_nestor (781844)
[+] Technology: OpenSolaris Indiana Released 359 comments
Lally Singh writes "The Linux-friendly OpenSolaris Indiana has been released! A new, modern package manager and all the goodies of Solaris: ZFS, DTrace, SMF, and Xen on a LiveCD that was designed for Linux users. 'Why use the OpenSolaris OS you ask? It's pretty simple, you'll find it full of unique features like the new Image Packaging System (IPS), ZFS as the default filesystem, DTrace enabled packages for extreme observability and performance tuning, and many many more. We think you'll be quite happy to came by to take a look!'"
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  • Great! I liked Solaris. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by harshmanrob (955287) on Friday March 28 2008, @01:10PM (#22896244) Journal
    It takes me forever to pull out SELinux when I deploy a new Linux server and now I have to worry about what the hell OpenSolaris is doing instead of running an application or whatever its purpose is supposed to be doing.

    Doesn't anyone else see MAJOR privacy and 4th amendment violations when government and business get into bed with each other?!?! I do not want any agency in the US government helping Sun, Microsoft, and or anyone else with "securing" their products. There is only one reason why the NSA is interested in OpenSolaris and it has nothing to do with "securing" it.

    • Helping a Vole out of a hole
      By Nick Farrell: Tuesday, 09 January 2007, 2:26 PM

      THE USA GOVERNMENT'S cryptologic organisation, the National Security Agency, has admitted that it is behind some of the security changes to Microsoft's operating system Vista.
      According to the Washington Post, the agency which was once so secret that it was jokingly referred to as 'No such Agency' has admitted making 'unspecified contributions' to Vista.

      Tony Sager, the NSA's chief of vulnerability analysis and operations group, told the Post that it was the agency's intention to help everyone these days.

      The NSA used a red and a blue team to pull apart the software. The red team posed as "the determined, technically competent adversary" to disrupt, corrupt or steal information. The Blue team helped Defense Department system administrators with Vista's configuration.

      Vole said that it has sought help from the NSA over the last four years. Apparently its skills can be seen in the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.

      The assistance is at the US taxpayers' expense, although the NSA says it all makes perfect sense. Not only is the NSA protecting United States business, its own Defense Department uses VoleWare so it is in the government's interest to make sure it is as secure as possible.

      Microsoft is not the only one to tap the spooks. Apple, with its Mac OSX operating system, and Novell with its SUSE Linux also asked the NSA what it thought of their products. The NSA is quite good at finding weapons of mass destruction that are not there.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by failedlogic (627314)
        I guess the most obvious question: If help was provided with XP and Vista in security, why so many security patches?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by BlowHole666 (1152399)
      With Linux don't you have the source? So how can your 4th amendment rights and privacy be violated when you can just remove the stuff? Maybe the businesses are trying to make money and the government has deep pockets so they secure their software so the government will spend money on their products. It is just capitalism at work. The world is full of smart people, I am sure the NSA can not slip some nice little "feature" into an operating system and someone will not find it. Maybe just maybe the NSA is tr

        • Re:Great! I liked Solaris. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Falstius (963333) on Friday March 28 2008, @02:00PM (#22896912)
          Spoken like a true delusional. Look, this is the NSA. They're pretty smart folks, some of my college classmates are probably there now (not that they'd be able to tell me). If they wanted to insert secret code into an OPEN SOURCE project they wouldn't make an announcement of collaboration, they'd create some fake person (or hire some real person) who starts submitting patches.

          I suspect what really is going on is that the NSA doesn't trust closed Microsoft code and wants to make sure there are secure open source operating systems they can use (they may get access to the MS codebase, but I doubt they'd be able to set up their own secure repository and verified build).

          Remember, sane people mistrust the NSA. Paranoid people work for the NSA.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Lally Singh (3427)
            One of the NSA's directives is for helping provide security for the rest of the gov, as a bit of an expert group. Securing OSs for gov use falls in that category.

            Your NSA friends can probably tell you they're working for the NSA. They just can't say doing what.
          • Spoken like a true delusional. Look, this is the NSA. They're pretty smart folks

            Smart, and RAND Corporation kind of evil. You can't use evil people, keep an eye on them and end up getting good returns. It's a delusion. If you let evil people be involved in your enterprises, they will fuck them up, and you as well. Most people need to learn this the hard way.
            • Government organizations are the sum of its leadership, the people are just people like you and me. Please don't confuse the two, I can tell you from personal experience that the people who work at NSA are not out to get you, there's no pasty little nerd sitting there cackling to himself about going after Mr. Joe nobody.
          • I will submit patches to everything you post. You'll never notice, you don't read what you post do you? If I submit a 'patch' it is seen by a lot of people. But then again we're all out to get you. EVERYONE

        • Re:Great! I liked Solaris. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TrekkieGod (627867) on Friday March 28 2008, @02:18PM (#22897210) Homepage Journal

          Spoken like a true Sheep.

          Spoken like a conspiracy theory nut. Distrust of the government is a very good thing. Blindingly thinking the government is out to get you is as stupid as blindingly believing it's out to help you. In this case, SELinux is completely open and out there for you to see.

          It takes teams of people to understand the ins and outs of large sums of source code

          Do you think teams of people haven't gone through the SELinux code with a fine-tooth comb? Security researchers were all over that, when the code was first given to the community in 2000. It wasn't placed in the mainline kernel until 2003. There has been plenty of time for people to find echelon-type code in there. Not to mention it would be pretty stupid to put that type of code in the open, as it would destroy people's confidence in the NSA and allow people who looked at the code to use these hooks for their own benefits, thus potentially using it against the US Government itself, since several departments including the DoD and the NSA itself use it.

          I have hacked the kernel and made changes but I do not understand the entire thing, not one person could build an OS like Linux and deploy it without community support.

          No, but I guarantee you that if you submitted your kernel changes to the mainline tree, several people above you looked at those changes and vetted it as worthwhile for inclusion. And you can bet every one of those people don't understand the entire kernel, but sure as hell understood the part of the kernel you were messing with. And they understood what your code was doing. Anyone can make changes to the linux code, but it's not an open source repository that everyone submits to, there are specific processes to get things accepted to the main tree.

          The government is like a sexually transmitted disease, easy to catch and hard as hell to get rid of.

          The solution to sexually transmitted diseases is to be vigilant and careful, not to stop having sex. If all humans become so afraid of sexually transmitted diseases that they quit having children humanity would be gone. Similar fate would befall you in total anarchism. Be wary of your government, and require it to be open. Please don't bitch about the good and open things the government has done, we need to encourage more of that.

            • You are half right. Anarchy is not chaos. It is the lack of "unnatural laws." Unnatural laws are the ones that create an uneven benefit to one group or person. A natural law would be the freedom from harm for not interfering with anybody. An unnatural law would be forcing somebody to pay for a service they neither use nor require, aside from your forcing them to do so.
        • 1. The NSA wouldn't announce that they are trying to make Linux more secure and then slip in back doors. Heck they submit there patches for all the world to see. If they tried it the finger would point right back at them. And don't you think that everybody and their dog will look at the NSA patches just to check them for such a stupid move?
          2. If the NSA wanted to pull something like that they would simply create a person and start adding code that ISN"T under their name!

          Hate to tell you but this Internet t

    • Doesn't anyone else see MAJOR privacy and 4th amendment violations when government and business get into bed with each other?!?! I do not want any agency in the US government helping Sun, Microsoft, and or anyone else with "securing" their products.

      Not necessarily. Without government and business "in bed with each other" - even ignoring the basic impossibility of avoiding that in the real world, unless the government has its entire separate economy, industrial base, telecom system... which sounds much scari

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Doc Ruby (173196)
          Well, like I said, I encourage the paranoia. But it must be tested by realism.

          I would wait before introducing any OS into a secure critical path until after it has had the maximum review I can afford to wait for. Thre's no reason to believe that the NSA or other spooks haven't had their sticky fingers all over the insides of any popular OS, especially a closed one in so many sensitive operations like Solaris has been for so many years. Microsoft goes without saying, but there's no reason that say NetBSD con
    • On the contrary, this is exactly what I believe the "National Security Agency" should be doing. They should be using their vast economic and intellectual resources to help the people. Currently my tax dollars pay for a huge amount of internal research, just so they can use the knowledge against perceived enemies should the need arise.

      The resources that they spend on static analysis and cryptanalysis should be put to work making the nation more secure. By locking up information, they are making everyone l

    • The 4th amendment:
      The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

      Please tell me how NSA code contributions to a project involve any form of "searches and seizures", much less "unreasonable" ones. Or alternatively, show me how
    • [quote]It takes me forever to pull out SELinux when I deploy a new Linux server[/quote]

      Why not use a distro that doesn't use it by default? Or do all distros use it by default? Serious question.

        • It's actually kind of nice. SELinux will let you know when you've done a system change but without stopping you. That way you know if something has changed (that you yourself didn't do).

          But not when SELinux is disabled, right? When running in permissive mode, it logs all would-be denials, but does not enforce them. When disabled, SELinux doesn't do anything at all.

  • SEOpenSolaris (Score:4, Interesting)

    by krlynch (158571) on Friday March 28 2008, @01:18PM (#22896370) Homepage
    If you read between the lines, and know anything about SELinux (also orginating inside the NSA), you come away with the impression that this is SELinux ported to OpenSolaris. Since the code will be as open as the rest of the OpenSolaris code, it doesn't sound like that big a deal to me ...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by zappepcs (820751)
      Perhaps you will be sleeping well this weekend. I will not. Now I'm going to be looking for any group anywhere on the Internet that is monitoring the source for SELinux and OpenSolaris for oddities that might just be a backdoor for the NSA.

      Have you EVER seen a leopard change its spots? ... hmmm... didn't think so. Perhaps that is why the saying came to be. The NSA is the NSA, and they won't be changing their spots. IF, and I really mean IF they had valuable contributions to commercial software or F/OSS rega

      • Re:SEOpenSolaris (Score:5, Informative)

        by dr2chase (653338) on Friday March 28 2008, @02:20PM (#22897248) Homepage
        [disclaimer - I work for Sun, and I KNOW that some of my friends have worked for the NSA, and I KNOW that I have relatives with security clearances. Who knows what's going on that I don't know.] As has been pointed out elsewhere, if the NSA wanted to insert backdoors in software, it is not likely that they would announce it loudly. Ditto for anyone other country's version of the NSA. There is a legitimate national security reason that the NSA would be interested in plugging holes in software that is widely-used within the US -- as bad as worms/spam etc might be, imagine how it would turn out if a nation decided to launch some sort of a cyber attack, concurrent with who knows what other action. That's bad news that we just don't need to hear. As far as the compiler goes, ab-so-lutely, be wary.
        • I can imagine cyber attacks that people don't want to hear. Some of them may already be in the wild and still dormant. While a DDoS is underway, company A is not likely to notice the discreet insertion of a specialized virus whose damage will not be apparent until it is needed. For all we know, Facebook may be a virus. While you might argue, also take the devil's side and tell me why that would not work? The ability to spread viruses is merely a test, not just for those that would spread specialized malicio
        • As far as the compiler goes, ab-so-lutely, be wary.

          Let's not forget the CPU itself. It's interesting that Sun has put a couple of their chips under a community source license. I'd guess that it would be very difficult to verify whether a chip was fabricated based on a certain set of microcode, unaltered.

          I don't know one way or another whether the NSA has other motivations. I do believe that if they wanted to insert a back door in open source products they would be forced to go to great lengths to do so g

      • Now I'm going to be looking for any group anywhere on the Internet that is monitoring the source for SELinux and OpenSolaris for oddities that might just be a backdoor for the NSA.

        SELinux has been out for around eight years, six years in the official Linux kernel. You'd think that they would have found any back-doors by now, if there would really be any.

  • Whatever happened to the project embedding a Solaris kernel inside a Debian/GNU OS? Would the current version of that OS work properly with this FMAC and the TrustedExtensions to run "Linux" apps on a much more secure OS?
  • Contrary to some of the more paranoid types around here, I think this is a great announcement. As I was reading regarding prior NSA work with Sun on security implementations, what I am seeing is an opportunity-- like Sun does -- to leverage the requirements of a hyper-security aware entity [ the NSA ] into open source systems [Open Solaris] but once opened sourced, those same techniques can be applied to harden just about any operating system.


    On the NSA side, having many eyes analyzing their code has both risks -- if holes are found in their security model or implementations, potentially these could be exploited by the blackhat types and benefits -- more weaknesses discovered faster and holes plugged so that the blackhat types get closed out of NSA type stuff faster than they can do it with closed implementations.

    But neither of these scenarios will let NSA somehow increase their "big brother reach" because with many eyes comes near perfect scrutiny that would quickly out any code back-doors, etc. that would be usable by the white hats or the black hats.

    On the whole I find this to be a cool/worthwhile endeavor on Sun's part and look forward to it's efforts being leveraged into all of the Open Source stuff that can use it.

    • You can imagine the hue-and-cry that would result if an NSA-originated back door (or other deliberate remote exploit) was found. In a product like Windows, I suppose they could get away with it (probably already have) but an open-source product is a different matter. No plausible deniability.

      I imagine the Chinese will be looking upon this effort with some interest.
  • You take an extremely robust, complex OS and pair it up with a complex, robust/political organization will equate to .... a mess.

    All this collaboration will do is create 5% really good gems, and 95% throw away code--and it will take 4yrs to see any result knowing how fast both organization move.

    I like openSolaris, but I unless Nexenta gets it butt in gear, Linux will win hands down on the usability front.

    • I think that you may have missed SELinux, which the NSA contributed in the year 2000 (accepted into the mainline kernel in 2002).

  • Schwartz: Historically, this type of collaboration used to involve reams and reams of legal documents describing all kinds of confidentiality restrictions, intellectual property exchanges, or cumbersome institutional processes. But it got really simple when we embraced the open source community - now our most fruitful collaborations boil down to this: "come join the community." And that's exactly what we're announcing with the National Security Agency, they've joined the OpenSolaris community.

    [...]

    Vass: If

  • Sun sells a lot of equipment to the US government. Anyone who has dealt with adding a new system to a classified network understands the amount of extensive documentation and accreditation that is required before IATO. Hopefully, NSA's contributions to improving Solaris security will pay dividends in reducing this.
  • This has strong implications on physics. Suppose time does tell, then the NSA decides to 'disappear' time. What then? Huh?

  • This isn't news... (Score:3, Informative)

    by giminy (94188) on Friday March 28 2008, @08:42PM (#22901688) Homepage Journal
    This isn't news. .GOV helped Sun build Trusted Solaris back in the day (they also helped Hewlett-Packard develop Trusted HP/UX). The government isn't doing this stuff to be evil, and I know my saying, "Don't be paranoid," won't make anyone any less paranoid -- but really the government needs certain security features to solve its problems (such as Cross-Domain information sharing), and the commercial industry simply doesn't need that stuff. Or, at least, it doesn't think it needs it. The only way for the government to get the OS features it needs is to work with a company directly to do it, or use an open source alternative.

    Originally, .GOV decided to work with companies. Like I said, Trusted Solaris, Trusted HP/UX, and some others that I can't think of, were created. Along came Stephen Smalley and his FLASK security architecture. Linux was the first and easiest place to implement it, and the NSA spearheaded the project. You can imagine that Sun (the only vendor of an OS that supported multi-level data just a few years ago) wasn't all that happy -- .GOV pretty much promised Sun, "If you build and maintain your trusted OS, we'll keep buying licenses and hardware."

    Now that isn't so. It seems only fair to help Sun and the Solaris community in the same way that the government has helped RedHat and the Linux community: provide some resources and some know-how to make the OS do what the government wants, so as to not hand RedHat a huge government-assist...the government basically wants competition here. As a taxpayer, I can't say that I'm complaining...

    Reid

    • OpenSolaris (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheNinjaroach (878876) on Friday March 28 2008, @01:08PM (#22896222)
      "Open" is the keyword here. It's not like they are going to be submitting binary patches or that we can't review the source code they submit.

      I'd also like to point out the SELinux [nsa.gov] project, will you abandon Linux now too?

      You should really adjust that tin foil, it's messing with the signals that are already inside your head.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mrsteveman1 (1010381)
          On systems that do use SELinux, the NSA isn't the one who compiled it in, the distribution did. I fail to see what avoiding SELinux like the plague accomplishes anyway, its just a mandatory access control system. It's also typically disabled at boot time anyway.

          SElinux is also a part of the mainstream kernel, so perhaps you don't trust those people either? Perhaps you should review the source line by line, because how do you know that unchecking SELinux in the config REALLY removed it from the final binary?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wizardforce (1005805)

      Why trust any contibution?
      because you can literally stare at the source code and audit it. this isn't windows or Mac where you've literally put your security in their hands, FOSS is more or less transparent so if you don't like where things are going you can fork the project and take things your own way. you can submit patches if you find a flaw or backdoor of some sort in the code.
      • > you can literally stare at the source code and audit it.

        What good does that do if the gcc binary has been modified to insert nasty code when it compiles. All of the source code could be clean, including the source code of gcc. Then anything that gets compiled has backdoors inserted.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by wizardforce (1005805)
          that's hogwash. you don't use a compiler that you don't have the sources to.
          • How do you compile the compiler?

            There is this famous trick of having a virus/trojan in the compiler so that when it compiles (another) compiler it will insert the virus into the new compiler too.

            See Ken Thompson, Reflection trusting trust.
          • >that's hogwash. you don't use a compiler that you don't have the sources to.

            The grand parent was making a reference to a historical case where a compiler binary was created that would create a back door in compiled software. Editing the compiler sources in this case would normally help, except that the compiler was designed to detect that it was recompiling itself and reinsert the code that had been removed from the sources.

            http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/emergingtech/edge/archives/ken-thompson-and-the-selfr [ittoolbox.com]
      • That's all good and well in theory, but how well does it work in practice?
        IDK how large the source for the average Linux distribution is, but I bet we're talking about dozens, if not hundreds of megabytes of code. You're never going to be able to audit all of it on your own, the only way to do an audit is to assemble a group of people and divide the work. But what if an insidious programmer added seemingly innocuous bits of code to dozens of files, so no single auditor is likely to see the entire backdoor c

    • How many people want to unwittingly maintain an Echelon outpost for the Internet?

      To put it into geek-speak, "We could tell you, but then we'd have to reiserize you."

    • Re:New Meaning of Spyware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bfields (66644) on Friday March 28 2008, @02:28PM (#22897366) Homepage
      The NSA is a huge organization, does a lot of different things, and as a result, it can--like a lot of large companies and agencies--seem a bit schizophrenic.

      NSA employees have made significant contributions to Linux already, and there have been the usual arguments over design choices that any such project faces, but there's never been the smallest suggestion of any subterfuge.

      OpenSolaris's work is conducted in the light of day, and I doubt the NSA's participation will be any more nefarious there.

      Part of the NSA's mandate seems to be to improve the security of everybody's operating systems. That's work that can benefit all of us, is exactly the sort of work that a "national security agency" *should* do, and we should encourage it, while still condemning the projects we disapprove of.

    • Re:New Meaning of Spyware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zoidbergo (751725) on Friday March 28 2008, @03:30PM (#22898424) Homepage
      I'll be the first to yell out at things like warrantless wiretapping, but believe it or not, even at NSA they use Windows and Linux/Unix on their hardware. It's in their best interest and the interest of their mission (as a consumer of said OSs) to make sure that those OSs are as secure as they can be. And some of the smartest security researchers on the planet work for NSA. So why not?

      One of the NSA's growing missions is also to secure the electronic interests of the United States and its citizens. That includes doing anything they can to help secure the infrastructure of US interests. All our banks and national financial stability rely heavily on the security of computer systems. If they can't benefit from this added security, what's the point of securing a defense system if someone can hack into your federal bank system and make you lose billions?

      So things like an overall more secure Solaris or Linux (or even Windows Vista) benefits everyone, including the electronic interests of the citizens of the USA, who the NSA also serves. Remember, they ARE a government agency (an occasionally evil one, though most of them do evil things every now and then.)
    • When it comes to the stuff that causes your tin foil hat to get warm, your way to late and they already took care of the rest years ago. For example why does every major Unix and router operating system use the encrypted root (or admin) password to seed the tcp sequence number. So if we look at what Solaris does with its tcp_strong_iss generator, its starts out by leaking bits that are derived from the password hash along with a very weak and predictable pseudo random number. The system is such that you

    • From the article, "MAC's exists so that not just anyone, for example, can look at your passport file without permission..." Whaaaa?? Isn't that what just happened to the presidential candidates?

      Yes, that's why he picked that particular example.

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