THE NATIONAL SECURITY Agency, the government's security arm, along with help from Network Associates, last week announced it has made a security-enhanced version of Linux available for download. The NSA said it realizes that operating system security is necessary and that mainstream operating systems often lack critical security features that could enforce the confidentiality and integrity of network communications. Dubbed Security-Enhanced (SE) Linux, the NSA's version allows programs to have only the slimmest security permissions to run. SE Linux has a strong, yet flexible, access control architecture incorporated into the kernel to foil tampering and bypassing of security mechanisms. The...