June 12, 2017
Shah Sheikh (1294 articles)
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Kaspersky-OS

On a day by day basis do IOT (Internet of Things) and SCADA become more integrated in our lives. However, with the introductions of these new technologies, security issues have been evolving at an unprecedented rate. Little did manufactures of IOT devices and SCADA consider security integration enabling worldwide attacks to occur. Examples of IOT botnets such as Mirai have gone viral. Moreover, recent years have proven that cyber security may cause physical threat such as Stuxnet.

This led Kaspersky, a well renowned Russian security cyber security vendor, to design their operating system intended to secure embedded systems, industrial systems, and network devices. A “hack proof” OS based on microkernel architecture that solves the problem of securing critical infrastructures. Unlike other systems, a critical infrastructure cannot just go offline in order to solve a security issue, it needs to remain intact as critical operations are being managed. Another distinctive feature of Kaspersky OS is that it was built from scratch and isn’t based on Linux. Unlike a general operating system, it only has a CLI (command line interface) and only permits the execution of program under documented policies. An independent security engine takes care of enforcing policies instead of letting the kernel do that. To add, everything needs to be identified and label meaning that all applications are accompanied by their security configuration. An application is not permitted to be installed without installing their behavior configuration. Likewise, resources are not permitted to be accessed if they are not security labeled. Anonymous messaging is denied as only processes that are pre-configured may communicate. This illustrates that the OS is not a general purpose one, but rather designed specifically with security in mind.

Many more features can be seen at Kaspersky’s white-paper.

 

Reference:

http://thehackernews.com/2017/02/kasperskyos-operating-system.html