Search

ACM FORUM Name Calling I have just reviewed your (Bryan Kocher's) President's Letter entitled 'Eschew Obfuscation.' It would not be possible to more strongly endorse your recommendation. As one of […]

Program comprehension plays an important role in many programming tasks. For example, about one half of a maintenance programmer's time is spent studying the source code and related documentation. Maintenance […]

LETTERS acm forum Thou Shalt Not... Fritz Lehmann has obviously not learned the value of data [ACM Forum, July 87, pp. 584-5]. With regard to computer break-ins, he expresses the […]

Researchers at the University of Idaho studied the physical effects of video display terminals (VDT) on VDT operators. The researchers also assessed the effect of work station adjustability and performance on worker satisfaction. Thirty-six VDT operators were asked questions about how frequently they adjusted keyboards, screens, or tables, and the frequency headaches, eye strain, and muscle aches experienced. The majority of the operators surveyed never adjusted any of the components of their work stations. Twenty-five percent of the workers complained of having neck aches on a regular basis, and 19% had daily occurrences of eyestrain. These findings, and additional photographic studies, suggest that workers adapt their posture to fit the work station, rather than adjusting the work station. Workers need to be trained to adjust work station components.

Multiple Independent Levels of Security and Safety (MILS) is a joint research effort between academia, industry, and government to develop and implement a high-assurance, real-time architecture for embedded systems. The goal of the MILS architecture is to ensure that all system security policies are non-bypassable, evaluatable, always invoked, and tamper-proof. Using these formally proven security policies guarantees information flow control, data isolation, predictable process control, damage limitation, and resource availability. As applications are not considered trustworthy components, information flow control needs to be performed by entities external to the applications. This approach allows for the integration of legacy applications that do not necessarily have security integrated into them. Therefore, the MILS architecture creates an environment that adds safeguards to previously insecure applications, allowing the integration of possibly insecure applications into a secure environment. To accomplish this in the MILS architecture, guards are placed between communicating entities to act as message content filters and enforce information flow control. This article discusses issues concerning design and implementation of MILS components for message routing and guarding on a secure Global Information Grid facilitating net-centric warfare and defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]