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The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is one of the more socially redeeming initiatives from the high tech industry. If you're not familiar with it, OLPC is a non profit initiative to provide laptops to children in the developing world. It's not a new initiative by any means but since 2005, it's gained significant momentum around its immediate goal to create and deliver a $100 laptop to the children of developing nations. It's gained support from industry luminaries like AMD's CEO Hector Ruiz.

Now what does this have to do with security? As you might imagine, potentially placing inexpensive laptops in the hands of hundreds of millions of children and then protecting them from all kinds of malware might pose a significant challenge. Students need to be able to download and use software as needed but be free from the threat of viruses, worms and Trojans.

Ivan Krstić, Director of Security for OLPC, has developed a security model called BitFrost that is very interesting and highly workable. He released the security model at the RSA Data Security Conference earlier this year. The premise for the security model is that programs should execute with a minimal, necessary set of privileges rather than the default privileges of the user. As an example, this means that the built-in calculator program in Windows should not be able to access the Internet or delete files. Instead of taking the traditional security approach of "looking for the bad stuff and eliminating it", BitFrost constrains the privileges of any application to a minimal set necessary for its basic operation, essentially creating a safe sandbox in which to operate.

This approach is by no means unique to BitFrost but I believe it's a key step toward safer operating environments. Let's hope this innovative approach isn't just limited to students in developing countries but will find its way to laptops running Windows in corporate America as well.

Posted by andreyee in Odds and Ends |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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