[Discuss] US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet

[feenberg at nber.org (Daniel Feenberg)]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2012, Richard Pieri wrote:

> On 6/11/2012 3:02 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
>> Hasn't the NSA already done this? We see the product of it in SELinux.
>
> No.  SELinux is not a distribution, not even internally at the NSA.  Nor is 
> it a complete security solution.  The NSA describes SELinux as a good start.

But DoD does have at least one Linux based official distribution:

    http://spi.dod.mil/LPS-Public_for_DoD.htm

It is called "Lightweight Portable Security". From the description:

   DoD-approved means to enter the AF Portal, AKO/DKO, NKO, MOL, webmail
   and other CAC-restricted websites

I expect there are others, this one is a very thin flashdrive bootable 
client and looks fairly interesting, although it apparently supports RDP
rather than X for GUI interactions. It is freely available from the DoD 
website.

daniel feenberg
NBER