Re: Hey old people

[Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () cisco com>]

Check out the commentary about how auditing something like OS/360 or  
Gecos was practically impossible, as they're essentially big balls of  
yarn, whereas auditing MULTICS is quite doable, because of its  
modular design and the availability of its source.

;>

Note that even though this study was completed in 1974, they refer to  
vulnerabilities found in 1972.

Here's thirty-year retrospective:

http://www.acsa-admin.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf

On Dec 21, 2005, at 12:26 PM, Blue Boar wrote:

> David Lodge wrote:
> > I love some of the quotes:
> > "Finally, and most important, current operating systems are so  
> > large, so  complex, [sic] and so monolithic that one cannot begin  
> > to attempt a formal  proof or certification of their correct  
> > implementation."
> > They'd have a field day with win 2k3 :-)
>
> Indeed.  They say that the programs are huge, as many as 100,000  
> instructions!  Much too large to audit properly. ;)
>
> I believe there's another section that talks about correctness  
> proofs, except that the biggest programs to have been proven  
> correct have only been a few hundred lines.  Real operating systems  
> can be a couple of orders of magnitude larger.
>
> But there's some hope for structured programming from some guy  
> named Djisktra or something. :)
>
>                                         BB
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Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () cisco com> // 408.527.6376 voice

 Algorithm agility is an essential feature in any Internet protocol.

                     -- Bruce Schneier



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