Real-Time Innovations has announced that its RTI Data Distribution Service real-time messaging middleware, has been integrated with Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). This combination provides real-time, high-performance distributed applications with the ability to securely distribute data by combining RTI's network communications with the Mandatory Access Control (MAC) facilities of SELinux.
RTI Data Distribution Service lets distributed applications securely exchange messages and data by authenticating peers and encrypting information that is sent over the network. The MAC capabilities of SELinux add several additional levels of protection against mis-configuration, software errors and application vulnerabilities:
- System-wide security policies control which applications are allowed to communicate with each other. Even applications with the appropriate credentials and keys can communicate only if explicitly provisioned to do so.
- Files containing keys, configuration information and logs are protected from unauthorized access.
The use of RTI Data Distribution Service with SELinux lets high-performance distributed systems meet stringent government and commercial security standards, including DCID 6/3 PL4, DoD 8500.2, NIST 800-53, PCI, SOX and HIPPA. The SELinux security type enforcement introduces a small increase in latency of roughly two percent regardless of message size.
"RTI Data Distribution Service and SELinux are well suited because of RTI's peer-to-peer messaging architecture," said Karl MacMillan, director of Core Technology at Tresys. "RTI's infrastructure is completely embedded within communicating applications, without separate processes such as message brokers or servers and as a result, SELinux is able to fully control all communication. Most other messaging implementations depend on shared processes, which introduce security vulnerabilities and significantly complicate security management."
