RE: I-0463: Hardware Inclusion In A TOE With FPT_SEP

["Arnold, James L. Jr." <JAMES.L.ARNOLD.JR@saic.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nir Naaman [mailto:nnir@netvision.net.il]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 6:53 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: Re: I-0463: Hardware Inclusion In A TOE With FPT_SEP
> 
> 
> 
> On July 17, 2002 08:05, "Daniel P. Faigin" 
> <faigin@solarium.aero.org> said:
> 
> > As for the UK interpreting something: It wasn't an 
> interpretation. In
> fact, to
> > my knowledge, the UK has no formal interpretations or 
> guidance process; no
> > equivalent to what the NIB and ODRB output. They certainly 
> haven't made
> > anything public or out for public review.
> 
> Actually, I seem to recall from the 3rd ICCC that the UK CCIMB
> representative, Denise Cater (or maybe it was someone else?), 
> did describe
> a formal national interpretations and guidance process, but 
> explained that
> it
> was not open to the public. Maybe someone from the UK can comment?
> 

Regardless, national interpretation processes are not necessarily a good
thing since they promote international divergence of the CC. I personally
believe that any such energy should be placed in the international
interpretation process to promote international consistency.

> > REMEMBER, and I'll say it again: I-0463 was for the case 
> where there are
> NOT
> > appropriate objectives for the IT environment. In the 
> presence of such
> > objectives, the door has been opened to an argument that there is
> trustable
> > external support.
> 
> It is interesting to note how the Oracle DBMS.PP uses 
> FPT_SEP: it refines
> the TOE SFR to refer to "DATABASE subjects" rather than 
> "subjects", and
> defines an environmental security objective for the 
> underlying operating
> system
> to protect from tampering the files used by the DBMS to store 
> the database
> and the TOE processes managing the database.
> 

I tend to think the refinement is both legal and unnecessary, since
"subjects" are always relative to the TOE. Hence, for a database TOE it
makes perfect sense that its subjects are database subjects. Perhaps the
refinement was necessary to clearly differentiate those subjects from other
subjects that may exist in the IT environment.