Secure systems development based on the common criteria

Abstract

Security is a very important issue in information processing, especially in open network environments like the Internet.The Common Criteria (CC) is the standard requirements catalogue for the evaluation of security critical systems. Using the CC, a large number of security requirements on the system itself and on the system development can be defined. However, the CC does not give methodological support.In this paper, we show how integrate security aspects into the software engineering process. The activities and documents from the Common Criteria are tightly intertwined with the system development, which improves the quality of the developed system and reduces the additional cost and effort due to high security requirements. For modelling and verification of critical parts of the system, we use formal description techniques and model checking (supported by the graphical CASE tool AuToFocus), which increases both the understanding of the system specification and the system's reliability. We demonstrate our ideas by means of a casestudy, the PalME project--an electronic purse application for Palm handhelds.

A systematic classification of security regression testing approaches

“…Vetterling et al [56] propose an approach for developing secure systems evaluated under the Common Criteria. In their approach, tests covering security requirements are created manually and represented as sequence diagrams.…”

A technique for expressing IT security objectives

“…Common Criteria [7,11,12] (CC) is emerging as an international standard and CC inspired security engineering frameworks have been proposed [13][14][15][16]. Proposed frameworks, however, focus on security engineering processes and fail to provide tools for developers to construct CC compliant assurance evidence.…”

Common Criteria Security Evaluation: A Time and Cost Effective Approach

“…The aim of ST is to describe the TOE itself and its security environment, security objectives, the claimed EAL, and related threats. In fact, the ST is the core document of system development based on the CC [13]. Most of the time, STs are produced by TOE developers themselves, nevertheless sometimes the CC evaluation laboratory, which is to evaluate the TOE, may help the developers through the ST preparation process.…”

“…So far, there have been a lot of efforts to make the CC more practical, comfortable, and cost effective to use. Vetterling et al in [13] show how to integrate security aspects into the software engineering process based on CC. In [10], Lee et al…”

“…The CC describes the relevant terms and their interpretation in an abstract way. Therefore, the CC leaves too much room for ambiguities and it is often difficult to find the right meaning of the security requirements [ 13]. Furthermore, the other problem of evaluation process based on the CC is that it is a time consuming process, so it eventually makes the process a costly one.…”