Synthesis of a software security system

This paper describes an ongoing Air Force sponsored project at The MITRE Corporation to develop provably effective security (access) controls for computer systems. Because of the stringent requirements imposed by the need for algorithmic security control, an innovative software engineering technique was developed for the design and implementation of the security kernel, the software portion of the controls. This paper touches briefly on these controls and then describes in some detail the components of the software engineering technique and the methodology for proving the correctness of the system. An example, taken from the security kernel for a PDP-11/45 based system, is used to demonstrate the components and techniques used.