Tick all the boxes

✍ Scribed by Danny Bradbury

• Book ID: 104449525
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2005
• Weight: 91 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1742-6847
• DOI: 10.1016/s1742-6847(05)70275-5

✦ Synopsis

I n January, the British Computer Society published a groundbreaking report, Grand Challenges in Computing Research. Designed to sum up the big challenges facing the computer industry over the next few decades, it was particularly interesting to the IT security community because of its focus on verifiable systems.

Self-verifying systems have been a holy grail for software developers since the 1960s.The idea is that, if software is a controlled system built using a set of well-understood algorithms, it should be possible to prove mathematically the reliability and security of that system.

If, for example, you load a new device driver into Windows, the operating system should be able to analyse the code and mathematically prove that it will run according to a formally defined set of requirements. This makes it possible to guarantee that the whole system will not lock up and that the new software will not compromise any security measures in operation.