New project on "Compartmentalised Computer Security" [19.12.2011]

This start-up project is funded in the framework of KIT's excellence initiative. It is concerned with isolating operating systems in order to separate applications of differing sensitivity or risk from one another. This approach is supposed to provide a user the opportunity to isolate those applications that might be expected to be subject to malware attacks from particularly confidential data. It is in principle relatively simple to build a system for compartmentalization. There are, however, large problems in building a system supporting highly secure isolation that offers protection against every form of malware yet at the same time has interfaces to existing applications and to new peripheral devices. The security and user friendliness of prototypes and products of this kind will be examined in the start-up project.

The project is being conducted by ITAS jointly with the Institute of Cryptography and Security (IKS) of KIT. ITAS was a participant in the EU project "Open Trusted Computing", in which the possibility to solve the problems mentioned was demonstrated by a prototype. ITAS will bring in its experience from that project.