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Yeah, that was all marketing nonsense meant to confuse laypeople. TCSEC Level C2 was intentionally designed to be a “baby’s first security certification” level
by Veserv 3y ago
Yeah, that was all marketing nonsense meant to confuse laypeople.
TCSEC Level C2 was intentionally designed to be a “baby’s first security certification” level meant to allow existing known insecure products to get a (low) rating so that commercial vendors could get familiar with the concept [1]. It, at no point, was ever meant to indicate any meaningful level of security was achieved, just that you filed the paperwork. In fact, Level B1, the level above C2, was meant to be the “training wheels” level. Microsoft has still never achieved a security certification in the successor standard, the Common Criteria, that has reached the “training wheels” level.
Microsoft security is a joke now and was a joke then, nothing has changed.
[1] https://www.stevelipner.org/links/resources/The%20Birth%20and%20Death%20of%20the%20Orange%20Book.pdf https://www.stevelipner.org/links/resources/The%20Birth%20an...
- helloooooooo 3y agoFrankly, those are just box ticking exercises. Same with SOC certifications. Security is not a state of being, it is a process.
- Veserv 3y agoIn what world are formal proofs of correctness “box ticking exercises”? You are wrongly extrapolating that the lowest levels of certification, that were literally designed to allow people incapable of more than box ticking to be rated on a unified scale, somehow applies to the levels that were designed to evaluate actual security. That is like saying the Richter scale is useless because you can not even feel a 1.0 earthquake. That is the entire point. The scale can measure from very low to very high. You are complaining that the scale is useless because the lowest ratings are easy to get, yeah, duh, that is why they are low ratings. However, you are correct for SOC. That is because the highest ratings are easy to get and are mere box ticking exercises. If the highest rating is easy, then the standard is useless for evaluating anything beyond that. This logic does not apply when a low rating is easy to get; that just means anything which can only get a low rating sucks.
- astrange 3y agoAdding the word "formal" to something doesn't mean it can do the impossible. It's not realistic to prove things correct, since it's both an impossible amount of work and you'll end up finding that your definition of "correct" was incorrect. (CompCert, a "formally correct C compiler", has had bugs found in it.)
- Veserv 3y agoI do not see how that is relevant to my statement that formal methods, as required by the higher Common Criteria levels, do not constitute “box-ticking exercises”. Or are you arguing that these standards which require proofs of correctness are useless because proofs of correctness are much less impressive than box ticking?
- astrange 3y agoThey are extremely expensive box ticking exercises. Furthermore, I don't think anything except box ticking exercises exists or could ever exist. You can only write down ways to make a process worse, not better.
- Veserv 3y agoI know that I have more confidence in a proven compiler that is thoroughly tested over a random compiler Joe the intern slammed out, but you do not seem to think that way. That is fine, you do you.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoNothing realistically complex can be proven "correct". There is even a mathematical theorem about it - given a program's code, one can't even prove that it ever stops. One can, of course, apply proof of correctness to simple curcuits, where all possible inputs and outputs can be enumerated.
- Veserv 3y ago