Re:What I learned while securing Ubuntu (2015)
by nickpsecurity on Sunday June 12, 2016 @12:28AM
(#11886644)
Remember that those are the most broken of the certification criteria. They just say it has certain features with a structured development process. Jonathan Shapiro had a nice write-up after Windows got EAL4+:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040214043848/http://eros.cs.jh...
Whereas, medium to high assurance evaluations were more meaningful as they had stronger assurance requirements. Precise ways of looking at system, careful implementation, every feature corresponding to a requirement, covert channel analysis, pentests, SCM, trusted distribution, and so on. Those say quite a bit about what level of trust one can put into software. That's how it was originally meant to be done. So, you can put a little more trust in the TOE.
Whereas, for EAL4, there's no reason to believe it's secure at all given the criteria are designed for "casual or inadvertent attempts" to breach security. Internet and insider threats are slightly more hostile than that. ;)
Most people regard OpenSSH as very well written software. But guess what? Poor procedural controls at Debian meant that lots of systems generated weak keys. Certification of a known, verified build process helps with that kind of problem.