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US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

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Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#21

Post by Odin9 »

r00fus wrote: post #16
salem wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be pretty irresponsible for them to standardize on a single source vendor for this, so what are the alternatives? WinMo? Plus the government already has a long history of investing R&D into securing linux-based systems.

The alternative is to support multiple platforms. Standardizing on a single platform is as foolhardy as standardizing on a single company. Even open platforms have defacto owners/controllers (Java anyone?).

Government and multiple platforms. That's cute. I guess you've never worked an IT job in the government before.

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#22

Post by notthemessiah »

This comes hot off the heels of the ACLU filing a FTC complaint about lack of security: http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/aclu-files-f... Interesting that where the market and the FTC fails to act, the Navy finds it necessary to pick up the slack.

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#23

Post by jedc »

I found it interesting that they specifically called out use on Virginia-class submarines. As a former submarine officer myself, there certainly are some applications on board where this would certainly make sense. (Not in the engine room operationally, but in other areas definitely.)

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#24

Post by threeseed »

vabmit wrote: post #5

The DoD is committing to Android as a platform in a massive way. Apps 4 Army is a key example. The push is so large and widespread that I think it will force the whole US Gov't along with it. Everyone from political leaders, to soldiers, to doctors at VA hospitals, to employees at defense contractors, will be required to use Android because of government security certifications and custom apps. There's a good chance…

What type of deluded nonsense is this ? Since when did adoption by the US government decide who will win the mobile platform 'war'.

And I was under the impression that Apps 4 Army was built for iOS first. Does that mean iOS will now 'win' ?

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#25

Post by neurotech1 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #18
dublinben wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the military appreciates the security advantages of open source more than many other organizations. There's really no way to trust national security information to black-box proprietary systems. This concern has even extended to the actual chips running the software, since they're often made in China.

I always assumed the military would insist on having full sourcecode for everything they used, to protect against an important supplier going out of business and the like. I'd be surprised if they didn't have access to all of the code for pretty much every Windows product for example.

The problem is support. If DoD actually do a source update to a supported software package, such as Windows XP, MS is not required to support that update. From what I understood, if its a security flaw, or major operational impact, they work with MS to fix it and that doesn't cause support problems to the same extent.

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#26

Post by joyeuse6701 »

jedc wrote: post #23

I found it interesting that they specifically called out use on Virginia-class submarines. As a former submarine officer myself, there certainly are some applications on board where this would certainly make sense. (Not in the engine room operationally, but in other areas definitely.)

yes, that struck me as odd actually. What about those submarines make them a good fit with android technology?

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#27

Post by dsl »

vabmit wrote: post #5

The DoD is committing to Android as a platform in a massive way. Apps 4 Army is a key example. The push is so large and widespread that I think it will force the whole US Gov't along with it. Everyone from political leaders, to soldiers, to doctors at VA hospitals, to employees at defense contractors, will be required to use Android because of government security certifications and custom apps. There's a good chance…

Android is going to be the low cost field deployable random gadget, and this is an investment in bringing a minimum level of security to the platform.

For actual classified applications, the NSA (which provides solutions downstream to DoD and other groups) is already trying to standardize on a highly customized version of Windows CE built by General Dynamics that runs on XScale processors with NSA specific modifications. Some publicly visible applications of this stack are the Sectera Edge (the phone that replaced Obamas Blackberry) and the DTD2000.

Windows CE will become the very dominant winner in the mobile platform space because of this. :)

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#28

Post by jedc »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #26
jedc wrote: post #23

I found it interesting that they specifically called out use on Virginia-class submarines. As a former submarine officer myself, there certainly are some applications on board where this would certainly make sense. (Not in the engine room operationally, but in other areas definitely.)

yes, that struck me as odd actually. What about those submarines make them a good fit with android technology?

There's very little space on board a submarine. If the Navy was willing/interested in putting paper-based workflows onto Android devices, it could save a good amount of physical space on board.

Re: US Navy to pay $1M to make Android more secure

#30

Post by brucehart »

The Navy has an SBIR solicitation out for this topic, but it does not necessarily mean that it is going to put up $1MM. Phase I funding is small (less than $100k per award) and sometimes no Phase II contracts are awarded for a topic. Of course, the Navy could also spend much more than $1MM if they decide to fund multiple Phase IIs (also not uncommon). It really depends on the results they see during Phase I and the importance of the topic compared to other funding opportunities.
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