The Caernarvon secure embedded operating system

Abstract

The Caernarvon operating system was developed to demonstrate that a high assurance system for smart cards was technically feasible and commercially viable. The entire system has been designed to be evaluated under the Common Criteria at EAL7, the highest defined level of assurance. Historically, smart card processors have not supported the hardware protection features necessary to separate the OS from the applications, and one application from another. The Caernarvon OS has taken advantage of the first smart card processors with such features to be the first smart card OS to provide this kind of protection. Even when compared with conventional systems where the hardware protection is routine, the Caernarvon OS is noteworthy, because of the EAL7 assurance. This approach facilitated implementation of a formally specified, mandatory security policy providing multi-level security (MLS) suitable for both government agencies and commercial users. The mandatory security policy requires effective authentication of its users that is independent of applications. For this reason, the Caernarvon OS also contains a privacy-preserving, two-way authentication protocol integrated with the Mandatory Security Policy. The Caernarvon OS includes a strong cryptographic library that has been separately certified under the Common Criteria at EAL5+ for use with other systems. The Caernarvon OS implements a secure method for downloading trusted and untrusted application software and data in the field, with the assumption that all applications are potentially hostile. While the initial platform for the operating system was smart cards, the design could also be used in other embedded devices, such as USB tokens, PDAs, cell phones, etc.

A Dynamic and Ubiquitous Smart Card Security Assurance and Validation Mechanism

“…To ensure that the UCOM is a reliable, secure and efficient model, it is necessary that smart cards and their applications should provide assurance along with validation of the implemented security mechanisms to the requesting entities. Similar mechanisms are mentioned in literature [6][7][8], but their focus is on the ICOM. Although, the primary focus of this paper is on a framework that satisfies the UCOM requirements, we consider that the framework could be equally valid in the ICOM environment.…”

“…Some reservations are expressed in the literature regarding the validity and the process efficiency of the CC [7,12,13]. However, the CC has taken a strong hold in the smart card industry, especially in high security smart cards like banking and IDS/passports etc, as a security evaluation-standard of choice.…”

Modern and Digitalized USB Device With Extendable Memory Capacity

“…We can also use the Caernarvon operating system demonstrate that a high assurance system for smart cards was technically feasible and commercially viable. The entire system has been designed to be evaluated under the Common Criteria at EAL7 [6].The processor must also be implemented for the functioning of the Computerized Pen Drive. We use the Nurture IDR segmentation and multiple instructions queues in superscalar pipelining processor [7], which is very fast and the efficient processor.…”

The Computerized Pen Drive

“…We can also use the Caernarvon operating system demonstrate that a high assurance system for smart cards was technically feasible and commercially viable. The entire system has been designed to be evaluated under the Common Criteria at EAL7 [7].The processor must also be implemented for the functioning of the Computerized Pen Drive. We use the Nurture IDR segmentation and multiple instructions queues in superscalar pipelining processor [8], which is very fast and the efficient processor.…”