A Secure Shell Toolkit for Unix Based Intelligence and Electronic Warfare (IEW) Applications

This research proposes the development of a toolkit that provides security functionality required by IEW applications targeted for Unix platforms in order to meet DIA accreditation criteria for System High mode. Many versions of Unix are available and only a few are considered to be secure thus requiring security functionality to be implemented in the IEW application. The idea of the toolkit is to move the required security functionality out of the application and the operating system, regardless of the targeted version of Unix. A well-defined and controlled interface to the toolkit will be implemented using object-oriented techniques. Interaction with the toolkit is restricted to this interface. The toolkit interface and behavior will always remain the same, only its internals may change in order to port the toolkit to another platform. The advantage of this object-oriented approach is that it forces the application to access the toolkit through a well-defined, controlled interface, thus isolating the application from the Unix operating system.