Kaspersky developing OS for secure SCADA systems

Eugene Kaspersky, founder of the eponymous anti-virus software company, wants to equip industrial control systems, such as those used by nuclear power stations, with a secure operating system developed from scratch by Kaspersky Lab. The company is reported to have been working on the project, code-named "11.11", for ten years.

The company has now confirmed the project but nonetheless shied away from providing any specific details or technical information. Instead, the truly epic project announcement and what purports to be a description meander off into very general lists of problems and concerns.

In an interview with Kaspersky's own Threatpost news service, the company's founder even goes so far as to say that, "It's true no one else ever tried to make a secure operating system." You don't necessarily have to like Theo de Raadt to recognise that this was exactly what OpenBSD set out to do – and with some success.

Should "11.11" ever reach finished product status, one might be forgiven for having some doubt as to whether Western companies are going to be keen to deploy products from the Russian security firm within their critical infrastructure. For one thing, the quality of code from the company's labs has become something of a running joke in the security industry – as the saying goes, the tailor's wife is the worst clad and security vulnerabilities in security software are a hard reality. Secondly, in the American media Eugene Kaspersky's name is frequently mentioned in the same breath as the KGB or its successor the FSB – an accusation which he vehemently denies, preferring instead to describe himself as, "just a man who's here to save the world".

(crve)