Secure64 Software

Secure64 Software Corporation is a software development company headquartered in Greenwood Village, CO, USA, building secure, self-protecting, high performing server applications.

History

Secure64 was founded in 2002 and began full-scale development in 2005. Its founders include Bill Worley, CTO, a former chief scientist of Hewlett Packard and lead developer of PA-RISC and PA-WideWord technologies. Secure64 has filed for several patents. [ [http://www.itaniumsolutionsalliance.org/news/pr/view?item_key=a20175ea18b83332048676cb500fd8dc230ffaac Itanium Solutions Alliance: Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Contest Winners Announced ] ] Citation
last=Clark
first=Don
title=Chips' Security Capabilities Expand
newspaper=The Wall Street Journal
date=March 22, 2007 ] [ [http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/032007-secure64-builds-dns-appliance-with.html Secure64 builds DNS appliance with Itanium server - Network World ] ]

Technology

SourceT Micro OS

The SourceT Micro OS executes on standard Itanium server hardware, and provides the foundation for Secure64 software applications. Secure64 uses the term "micro OS" to describe SourceT, because, although it shares attributes of traditional microkernels and monolithic kernels, it is does not fit the classical definition of either.

Like microkernels, SourceT adheres to the principles that minimal code should execute in kernel mode (currently less than 4,000 lines of code in SourceT), and that all applications and operating system services such as File system, device drivers and protocol stacks should not execute in kernel mode. However, like monolithic kernel architectures, SourceT's operating system services are accessed through system service calls rather than through interprocess communication with user-mode servers.

Unlike general-purpose operating systems, which are designed to execute on a wide variety of hardware platforms, SourceT was specifically designed to take advantage of some of the unique security and performance features of the Itanium microprocessor to create a high performance, highly secure architecture. These unique Itanium features include:

*Completely independent read/write/execute privileges on memory pages
*Hardware controlled memory compartments with protection IDs
*Separation of control information from data on system stacks
*Inability to execute code from system stacks
*High performance from instruction level parallelism

The patent application filed in 2004 details the foundation for this secure architecture.

Self-Protecting Network Stack

Secure64 has a patent pending for the queued, non-blocking and self-protecting communications architecture used by SourceT. Designed from the ground up with a queued, scalable architecture that differs significantly from a traditional Berkeley sockets architecture, the network stack accelerates network I/O performance and automatically detects and drops malformed or flooding packets, such as those received as the victim of a Denial-of-service attacks.

Patent Applications

Customized execution environment (SourceT) [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=3&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=worley.IN.&s2=Secure64.AS.&OS=IN/worley+AND+AN/Secure64&RS=IN/worley+AND+AN/ Secure64 US Patent Application: 20040177243]

Queued, asynchronous communication architecture interface [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=worley.IN.&s2=Secure64.AS.&OS=IN/worley+AND+AN/Secure64&RS=IN/worley+AND+AN/Secure64US US Patent Application: 20060104295]

Operating system capable of supporting a customized execution environment [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20040177342.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040177342&RS=DN/20040177342 US Patent Application: 20040177342]

Products

Secure64 DNS

Secure64 DNS is a security-hardened commercial DNS appliance, deployed on a proprietary 64-bit operating system running on Intel Itanium hardware.

[http://www.secure64.com/products.shtml Secure64 DNS] is authoritative DNS server software built on the SourceT micro OS.

[http://www.secure64.com/library/labresults/secure64_test_lab_results.pdf ExtremeLabs report on Secure64 DNS: Performance and Security]

[http://www.secure64.com/docs/ExtremeLabs_results_Oct2007.pdf ExtremeLabs report on Secure64 DNS: Availability Under Attack]

References

See also

* Comparison of DNS server software