French Ministry of Defense Funds Development of Multi-Level Security Linux-Based Operating System Solution

An industrial consortium consisting of Bertin Technologies, SURLOG, Jaluna, Mandrakesoft, and OPPIDA has been granted a 7 million euros, 3-year contract by the French Ministry of Defense to develop a multi-level security Linux-based operating system solution that will reach the Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5 (EAL5). The project aims to address the industrial market at large, as well as telecommunication and enterprise systems. Mandrakesoft will contribute and adapt its Linux distribution, while SURLOG will instrument and monitor software development processes to ensure the very high evaluation level required by the project can be achieved. OPPIDA will perform regular evaluations of project intermediate results until the ultimate CC-EAL5 evaluation. The consortium envisions that hardware partitioning and virtualization technology will play a key role in designing future open operating system security solutions.