NSA constructs hardened Android, unleashes it on world
The National Security Agency (NSA) has released SE Android, a security-enhanced version of Android, which provides and enforces stricter access-control policies than those found in the popular mobile operating system by default.
SE Android is based on NSA's previous research into mandatory access controls (MACs) that gave birth to the Security-Enhanced Linux project back in 2000. SE Linux is a collection of Linux kernel security modules and other tools that provide a flexible mechanism for restricting what resources users or applications can access.
Over the years, most of the low-level SE Linux modifications were merged into the official Linux kernel and they were also ported to Solaris and FreeBSD. The NSA revealed its plan to port SE Linux to Android as part of a new project called SE Android at the Linux Security Summit last year. The first version was released on Jan. 6.
