Investigation of Current State of Crytpography and Theoretical Implementation of a Cryptographic System for the Combat Service Support Control System.
Abstract
The use of the cryptographic solution to a multilevel security problem as the basis of the design proved to be quite adequate for CSSCS applications. The design should add very little overhead to the operating system in both time and storage. Only a few additional procedures would have to be added to the security kernel since CSSCS is already based on a multilevel access control mechanisms. One drawback of the design is that the additions would have to be made to every EAC, COSCOM, and DISCOM. Although the design presented was a very broad description, its purpose was to show that the cryptographic solution could be used for the ciphering of transmitted and stored data in CSSCS. It is apparent that no system can be made totally secure using today's technology and computer architecture, unless everything in the systems is monitored all of the time. But, this would cut down on the speed and usefulness of computers system, since half of the CPU time would be devoted to monitoring itself. Thus, every type of security scheme will only absolutely protect some percentage of the information and will have a no protection at all with the other percentage. The major weakness of the present cryptographic algorithm is blind luck on the part of an intruder in decoding intercepted encrypted messages and the amount of overhead needed when a key has been compromised (the re-encipherment of anything ciphered that used the key, was derived from the key, or the key was derived from). Further work would examine the detailed description, simulation of the design and full implementation of the system.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1987
- Accession Number
- ADA182750
Entities
People
- Edward A. Fetzner
Organizations
- Colorado State University