CLIP OS

2018: Disclosure of source codes

In September, 2018 the French agency of national cyber security (Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information, ANSSI) opened operating system source codes of CLIP OS which was developed for use in government agencies.

In the press release of ANSSI it is reported that work on this platform was conducted more than 10 years. It is based on Linux kernel using "a set of mechanisms of security which provide very high level of resilience to a malicious code and allow to protect confidential information".

CLIP OS interface

Also the agency notes presence of the mechanism of the splitting allowing to separate public and  sensitive data on  two "absolutely isolated" to software environments.

OS can be installed in  gateways of security and at  normal workstations. For normal users of the ready version of CLIP OS by September, 2018  it is not provided — they need to arrange assembly independently.

ANSSI created two versions of the operating system — CLIP OS 4 and 5. The first of them belongs to the stable branch ready to rolling-out on the production-server. However all documentation is available only in French.

The version of CLIP OS 5 by September, 2018 is at an alpha testing stage. Documentation to it is translated into English therefore third-party developers and the beginning programmers can take part in development of the project at once.^[1]

ANSSI also released 14 modules CLIP OS 4 which, on their developers, "are interesting in terms of security as they can be reused out of the CLIP OS project". In particular, are available the connected authentication module (PAM), the program demon for service of the user administrative tasks, the facilitated TPM tool (Trusted Platform Module) with  the command line interface and  the different libraries connected with  cryptography and  enciphering.^[2]

Notes