Trusted Bundles

High level overview

The following is a stakeholder needs and high level design document for security related functionality being developed for the Eclipse 3.4 release. We will be building upon the 3.3 work of applying signatures to the bundles that make up the Eclipse platform.

Stakeholders and needs

There are several classes of stakeholders that have different needs regarding a security solution for the Eclipse platform. The exercise of defining a direction for security functionality must begin with the identification of these stakeholder and an evaluation of their needs.

Stakeholder identification

There are several identifiable classes of stakeholders when considering the needs of the Eclipse ecosystem. A list of the identifiable stakeholders follows:

• End-users - People who are users of Eclipse platform based technologies. There are at least two classes:
  • Enterprise - End-users who are using an Eclipse platform application in a large enterprise deployment context
  • Standalone - End-users who are using a unzip-and-run Eclipse installation
• Administrators - People tasked with managing a multi-user installation of an Eclipse platform based application
• Developers - People who code bundles for the Eclipse RCP
• Community - The general Eclipse community, including the Foundation and partner companies

Needs evaluation

Across these stakeholders, there are the following identifiable needs:

• End-users
  • Increased security from potentially malicious active content packaged as OSGi bundles
  • Security from subverted or misdirected administration (E)
  • Accommodation of a potentially low level of security competency
  • Usability and simplicity in setting and maintaining a secure configuration
  • Acceptable performance while using the Eclipse platform with security enabled

• Administrators
  • Increased security from potentially malicious active content packaged as OSGi bundles
  • Dynamicity of administration to deal with active threats
  • Simplicity of administration for a deployment wide configuration
  • Extensibility to contribute alternative implementations of security services

• Developers
  • Consistency with existing Java deployment packaging formats
  • Compatibility with existing and upcoming Java and OSGi security technologies
  • Extensibility to contribute alternate implementations of security services

• Community
  • A solid reputation as a platform which has security in mind for its users and member companies

Value identification

Value diagram

Given these stakeholders and needs, the primary intent of the solution can be defined as “To increase the security of the Eclipse platform”. This addresses the most fundamental needs of the most important stakeholders. The beneficiaries of the solution will be Eclipse users, administrators and community members – such as member companies and the foundation itself. The operand – which is the object of the value related change – is the Eclipse platform itself, and the value related attribute is security. In this case the transformation will be increasing.

Bug 153847 has been opened to track a solution to this requirement.