FSTEC creates the center of verification of OS for a public sector

On February 11, 2021 it became known of plans of the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC) to create the center of researches of security of operating systems on Linux kernel. 300 million rubles are selected for implementation of this project, will select the winner of the tender till March 2, 2021.

According to Kommersant with reference to documentation to purchase, the research center is created for increase in security domestic Linux platforms and decrease in possible effects from cyber attacks to objects of critical information infrastructure (KII, treat them IT systems of state agencies, banks, objects of transport, communication, health care, the enterprises of the defense, fuel, nuclear industry and power), which use such OS.

The CEO of IVK group Grigory Sizonenko considers logical desire of FSTEC to take development of domestic operating systems under control, considering that the Russian software companies take as a basis files for the Linux installation from foreign storages — repositories of Red Hat, Debian and Suse. Therefore FSTEC cannot be sure of security of systems created on the basis of Linux and absence in them foreign "tabs", he explained.

I do not exclude that FSTEC has more complete information about the risks connected with development of OS on the basis of foreign source codes" — Sizonenko told, having added that the aspiration of the regulator to make a kernel of domestic operating systems more transparent quite logically.

According to the deputy director general of Astra Linux Group Yury Sosnin, by February, 2021 efforts of developers of operating systems on a research of the code of a core Linux are very separated and cannot provide a guarantee of lack of vulnerabilities and errors in a system. He supported the idea of creation of Competence Center and researches in this area, but emphasized importance of that all developers interested in quality of the products were involved in the project.^[1]

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