[Cryptography] defaults, black boxes, APIs, and other engineering thoughts

[Bill Frantz]

On 1/5/14 at 12:25 PM, jthorn at astro.indiana.edu (Jonathan 
Thornburg) wrote:

>But this raises some genuine questions:
>* Is there a secure web browser?  My trust level in any of the biggies
>(Microsoft, Apple, Google, Mozilla) is low...
>* I've just booked a hotel room in <distant city>; the hotel sent me a
>.docx file which claims to be a confirmation.  Is there an "office suite"
>in which it's safe for me to look at that .docx file?
>* Same question, but for pdf files?
>* For bonus points, can that pdf-viewer edit fillable pdf forms?  I have
>seen claims that evince or mupdf can do this... but neither seems to
>handle either US or Canadian tax forms. :(

There is a path to make running the current versions of these 
programs safe.

As a thought experiment: Get a piece of hardware. Install an OS 
from R/O media -- e.g. DVD. Read your .docx/.pdf file from 
CD/DVC. Wipe the system and start over for the next file.

In addition to systems like KeyKOS/Capros/etc., which implement 
this model, a group a HP labs built a system called Polaris. 
Polaris started apps under a separate userid and tossed the 
userid when the app completed. Calling up an open file dialog 
box let the app access a specific file -- outside that separate 
userid -- specified by the human user of the system. Polaris 
depended on the integrity of the user/user security controls in 
Windows. If they failed, at least you could submit a bug report 
to Microsoft. :-)

Cheers - Bill

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