Green Hills Software refutes Wind River statements

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Executives at Green Hills Software Inc., maker of secure operating systems and large independent vendor of embedded software solutions, have responded to statements made by Marc Brown, vice president, VxWorks Product Strategy and Marketing for Wind River. He is quoted by Military Embedded Systems (http://www.mil-embedded.com/articles/id/?4281) as saying that Green Hills Software’s INTEGRITY-178B real-time operating system is not certified under EAL6+. In response to a question about the INTEGRITY-178B operating system, he replied:
“[Green Hills Software] only certified under “high robustness”; they did not certify under EAL6+, as they did not actually add in the necessary requirements to comply with EAL6.”

“This statement is false,” says a company representative. “The INTEGRITY-178B operating system is certified to EAL6+ (and High Robustness). It is printed directly on the certificate found on the NIAP Web site (http://www.niap-ccevs.org/st/st_vid10119-ci.pdf) and signed by Directors of NIAP and the NSA. The certificate says ‘Assurance Level: EAL6+, High Robustness’ just above the ‘Original Signed By’ in the lower left signature block.”

Brown goes on to say: “We’ve really tried to take a different approach from some other companies…We’re not tweaking or trying to force any new requirements into an existing product.”

In the event that Brown is alluding to Green Hills Software and INTEGRITY-178B, Green Hills executives want to “set the record straight: the INTEGRITY operating system was originally designed and developed for the purpose of formal security evaluation with a deep understanding of the mathematical basis of operating system security. The first deployment of the INTEGRITY operating system was for a nuclear weapons delivery system: the B1-B intercontinental nuclear bomber flight systems, navigation systems, and weapons systems. Other early deployments of the INTEGRITY operating system were for equally security critical systems: the B-52 and F-16 aircraft. Today, the INTEGRITY-178B operating system is being designed or has been deployed into almost every major next-generation commercial and military aircraft, including Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, Airbus’ new A380 and A350 Airliners, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, F-22 Raptor, C-130J Super Hercules, and the VH-71 Marine One helicopter, Airbus’ new A400M military transport, Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber, Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III military transport, Sikorsky’s S-92 helicopter, Airbus’ A320, A330 and A340 Airliners and Boeing’s 737, 747, 757, 767 Airliners.”

Brown continued with, “One of the reasons Green Hills is not listed on the NIAP’s Web site under systems evaluated to EAL6+ is that there are certain requirements that have to be satisfied in addition to developing in compliance to the SKPP.”

A Green Hills Software official explains, “We list the INTEGRITY-178B operating system under High Robustness on the NIAP Web site rather than EAL6+ because an expert in the field understands that a High Robustness certification is significantly harder than an EAL6+ or EAL7 evaluation because the U.S. government added 133 explicit requirements over and above 154 EAL7 requirements (including formal methods and NSA penetration testing) from the Common Criteria menu, in order to meet High Robustness: protection of the most valuable resources against the most sophisticated attackers.”

A timeline of Green Hills Software’s separation kernel promises and deliveries follows:

- 1997: releases INTEGRITY RTOS, first customer: Boeing B-1B

- 1999: promises DO-178B Level A certification

- 2002: delivers first of many DO-178B Level A customer certifications

- 2004: promises POSIX.1 conformance certification

- 2004: delivers POSIX.1 conformance certification

- 2005: promises EAL6+ certification

- 2008: delivers first ever NSA and NIAP certified EAL6+ certification

- July 2009 – delivers 2nd EAL6+ certification to a PowerPC 7448 customer

- Sept 2009 – delivers 3rd EAL6+ certification to a PowerPC 8548 customer

- Oct 2009 – delivers 4th, 5th and 6th EAL6+ certifications to PowerPC 8245, 7410 and 7447A customers