Secure Operating System

Abstract

Operating system development is a very diverse task, usually drawing from various applications of Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Information Technology. As such, the complexity of most usable systems is significantly higher than traditional software projects. This fact presents a problem when implementing security features and policies for existing systems. Often times it is already too late in the development process to make any substantial headway, and any gain from newly added features will likely not be good enough to deter determined attackers. Therefore, security needs to be involved in the development process and system design from the very beginning in order to be effective. This work explores operating system security concepts that should be at the foundation of any usable system. Specifically, it covers program and operating system security concepts that are present in modern systems. This background information is necessary for an analysis of state-of-the-art designs that incorporate security from the ground up. It also includes a survey of popular commercial and research systems in order to cover the different tradeoffs that exist between implementation techniques and security gains. While it is true that there is no such thing as perfect security for operating systems, depending on the context in which the system will be used it is possible to find the right balance between implementation efficiency, complexity, and security that satisfies its users. After all, the overall goal of operating system security is to provide an environment for applications to run such that all user data and private information is kept secret.