Safety and Security in GNU/Linux Real Time Operating System Domain

Abstract

Historically, because of regulatory constraints systems focused only on hardware and software safety, and considered security independently as an add-on, if anything required.

But, it is widely recognized safety-critical systems today are quite certainly security-critical too, as well as safety and security functions may influence each other. It also happens that the system’s usage context is not completely known nor understood at development time which means system maintenance will not just limited to bug-fixes and will involve continuous hazard analysis. Especially in Avionic and Automotive sectors, the growing awareness of conjoint safety and security pushed the research new paradigms for design, development, verification and validation, and the promotion of holistic methods and techniques for conducting safety and security co-engineering, co-assessment and certification/qualification. Finally, there is not a standard that provides conjoint guidelines for the safety and security domains so that compliance to multiple standards is currently the used approach.

This paper focuses briefly on the safety and security real-time operating systems, the architecture they are required to provide for addressing safety and security, and the applicable standards. It then highlights how a real-time GNU/Linux OS can be included in a formal certification package as demanded by SIL2 applications that meet the IEC 61508 requirements, and how such operating system should be improved for use into interconnected systems.