Call It Gumshoe Linux?

The National Security Agency (NSA) has released its own version of Linux.

WASHINGTON, March 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Security Agency has released its own version of the open-source computer operating system Linux, which offers enhanced security for users.

The new software was rolled out earlier this month to an e-mail list for users of Linux -- an operating system that many experts believe provides a more secure alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Windows. Linux is open-source, which means the core code is available to programmers to improve, as the NSA has done with its latest version of the so-called Security-Enhanced Linux, or SELinux.

The version provides what experts call Mandatory Access Control, which essentially limits the kind of instructions that software packages and users can issue to the computer, helping guard against hackers compromising it. MAC "confine(s) user programs and system servers to the minimum amount of privilege they require to do their jobs," says the agency on its Web site.


When I was in the Navy I worked indirectly for NSA. On Navy ships, Cryptologic Technicians are called "spooks" or "gumshoes," both references to spying/investigation work. The standard joke about NSA is that the letters stand for "No Such Agency."