“Microsoft announced this week that it has received Orange Book
C2 certification for NT 4.0, and FIPS 140-1 validation of the
cryptographic services in Windows 95, Windows 98, NT 4 and Windows
2000. Microsoft says that “customers now have formal, third-party
verification of the security” of these operating systems.
Microsoft also said that “C2 is generally acknowledged to be
the highest rating a general-purpose operating system can achieve”,
something that it has said before, but in different context, as we
shall see.”
“First let’s recap on these coloured books. The US Department of
Defense, through the US National Computer Security Center (NCSC,
part of the National Security Agency), has a series of “rainbow”
books, known as the DoD Trusted Computer System Evaluation
Criteria. The Orange Book defines the criteria, but the Red Book is
an interpretation of the Orange Book. The Red Book came about
because the Orange Book was inadequate with regard to networking.
There is also a Blue Book for advanced systems. The criteria are
hopelessly out-of-date in many respects, because it takes so long
for security organisations to develop standards.”
“The only C2 security that Microsoft had previously received was
Orange Book for Windows NT 3.5 (not 3.51) – but it was required
that networking was disabled, that the floppy disk drive was
disabled, and that the standard file system permissions were
changed to be very restrictive, along with many permissions in the
registry. Some cynics compared the process with castration. At the
time, Enzo Schiano, a Windows NT Server product manager also noted
that C2 presumes that the PC is kept locked away from unauthorised
users since it was only necessary to remove the hard disc to get
access to all the data.”