tumb, plunk...

The positions were created when Prof. Andrew S. Tanenbaum received a 5-year 2.5 million euro European Research Council “Advanced Grant” to do research in reliable and secure operating systems. Here is a summary of the grant proposal. The basic idea of the proposal is that current operating systems are much too big and very badly structured and the situation is getting worse every year. In this research we want to investigate much smaller, modular, fault-tolerant, multiserver designs. The research to be done by the postdoc will be determined in consultation with Prof. Tanenbaum, but the focus must be on making systems much more reliable and secure than they are now and it should fit into the grant proposal in some way. Funding is also available for several programmers and Ph.D. students; these positions have already been filled.
…

I am proposing replacing the entire monolithic kernel paradigm with a new one consisting of small, tightly constrained modules, running in user mode and each strictly obeying the POLA. Nothing like this has ever been achieved before. I also have many additional goals, such as being able to restart or even replace faulty components on the fly during execution and assign legal liability when faults occur, as described in the full proposal. While my previous work has taken a few baby steps in this direction, there is much more research needed to make this approach viable.
Fortunately, this can be done without affecting the user software by simply having the new operating system emulate the existing and long-stable POSIX interface (the UNIX standard), possibly extended somewhat (e.g.,with some of the Linux system calls). As long as the usual POSIX system calls such as OPEN, READ, EXEC, and so on are available, most UNIX software can be made to work without too much effort.

…

If this work succeeds, it will open up new areas to explore in terms of componentized, multiserver operating systems. People will then examine other kinds of new software components and how they fit in.
The project budget is just under 2.5 M€ and described in the full proposal

Two Lebanese men and a Palestinian have confessed to supplying Israeli intelligence agents with information regarding Hezbollah’s activities, media outlets in Lebanon reported on Tuesday.

The three men were arrested on Saturday for allegedly transferring sensitive information to Israel’s Mossad spy agency. According to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, their alleged espionage was exposed during an investigation of a retired Lebanese general also suspected of spying on behalf of Israel.

On the night of March 8, cruising 22,000 miles above the Earth, U.S. Navy communications satellite FLTSAT-8 suddenly erupted with illicit activity. Jubilant voices and anthems crowded the channel on a junkyard’s worth of homemade gear from across vast and silent stretches of the Amazon: Ronaldo, a Brazilian soccer idol, had just scored his first goal with the Corinthians.
It was a party that won’t soon be forgotten. Ten days later, Brazilian Federal Police swooped in on 39 suspects in six states in the largest crackdown to date on a growing problem here: illegal hijacking of U.S. military satellite transponders.

The crackdown, called “Operation Satellite,” was Brazil’s first large-scale enforcement against the problem. Police followed coordinates provided by the U.S. Department of Defense and confirmed by Anatel, Brazil’s FCC. Among those charged were university professors, electricians, truckers and farmers, the police say. The suspects face up to four years and jail, but are more likely to be fined if convicted.

Although there is an increasing trend for attacks against popular Web browsers, only little is known about the actual patch level of daily used Web browsers on a global scale. We conjecture that users in large part do not actually patch their Web browsers based on recommendations, perceived threats, or any security warnings. Based on HTTP useragent header information stored in anonymized logs from Google’s web servers, we measured the patch dynamics of about 75% of the world’s Internet users for over a year. Our focus was on the Web browsers Firefox and Opera. We found that the patch level achieved is mainly determined by the ergonomics and default settings of built-in auto-update mechanisms. Firefox’ auto-update is very effective: most users installed a new version within three days. However, the maximum share of the latest, most secure version never exceeded 80% for Firefox users and 46% for Opera users at any day in 2007. This makes about 50 million Firefox users with outdated browsers an easy target for attacks. Our study is the result of the first global scale measurement of the patch dynamics of a popular browser.

A Graphical User Interface (GUI for short) allows users to interact with the computer hardware in a user friendly way.
Over the years a range of GUI’s have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh, Windowsamiga, Linux, Symbian OS, and more.
We’ll be taking a look at the evolution of the interface designs of the major operating systems since the 80’s.
I should mention that this article showcases only the significant advances in GUI design (not operating system advances) and also not all of the graphical user interfaces and operating systems existing today.

On April 16, 2009, the Department of Justice released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture. Read the release »

A 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]
A 46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]
A 20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]
A 40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA. [PDF]

Overview

The IT Security EBK conceptualizes IT security skill requirements in a new way to address evolving IT security challenges. The EBK characterizes the IT security workforce and provides a national baseline representing the essential knowledge and skills that IT security practitioners should have to perform specific roles and responsibilities. As a single foundation linking competencies to security roles, the IT Security EBK will help ensure that we have the most qualified and appropriately trained IT security workforce possible.

The IT Security EBK was developed as an umbrella document that links competencies and functional perspectives to IT security roles. It reflects the vast contribution of resources and builds directly upon the work of established references and best practices from the public and private sectors, which were used in the development process and are reflected within the content of this document. The EBK is not intended to represent a standard, directive, or policy by DHS. Instead, it further clarifies key IT security terms and concepts for well-defined competencies, identifies notional security roles, defines four primary functional perspectives, and establishes an IT Security role, competency, and functional matrix.

Benefits

Potential benefits of the IT Security EBK for professional development and workforce management initiatives include the following:

Articulating the functions that professionals within the IT security workforce perform, in a context-neutral format and language.
Promoting uniform competency guidelines to increase the overall efficiency of IT security education, training, and professional development.
Providing a content guideline that can be leveraged to facilitate cost-effective professional development of the IT workforce, including future skills training and certifications, academic curricula, or other affiliated human resource activities.