this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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I’ve always wondered if the world’s major governments all have their own secret, bespoke operating systems for highly sensitive situations. Like, not Windows, Linux, macOS, BSD, or anything even remotely known to the public. But then you see high-ranking admin officials using bootleg Signal on an off-the-shelf phone or whatever.
I’d assume the actual intelligence agencies are more sophisticated. I doubt they’re running some “hardened” version of Windows or Android or whatever. But maybe I’m being naive and they all are just working with vendors.
Mostly vendors. Often on-prem versions customized for their sensitive work and the versions are 30+ years now.
They very much go by the mantra “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If you’re lucky enough to get one of those contracts, you’re on a gravy train, but brace yourself because you can expect to get a lot of complaints about how outdated and crap your system is. That and a whole lot of time dedicated to training and documentation.
You’ll also get the occasional person’s personal monument to themselves. “Joe’s been doing that GIS stuff for 30 years.” Whew those can doozies.
My husband says it is not secret what they use. It is something called L4-SEC which has formal proofs of correctness
We need the /s tag around here for even the mildest and most obvious jokes.
https://www.sigops.org/s/conferences/sosp/2009/papers/klein-sosp09.pdf
You may need to work on your jokes :)