BLACKER

An end-to-end encryption system for computer data networks that was developed by the U.S. DoD in the 1980s to provide host- to-host data confidentiality service for datagrams at OSIRM Layer 3. [Weis] (Compare: CANEWARE, IPsec.)

Tutorial: Each user host connects to its own bump-in-the-wire encryption device called a BLACKER Front End (BFE, TSEC/KI-111), through which the host connects to the subnetwork. The system also includes two types of centralized devices: one or more KDCs connect to the subnetwork and communicate with assigned sets of BFEs, and one or more ACCs connect to the subnetwork and communicate with assigned KDCs. BLACKER uses only symmetric encryption. A KDC distributes session keys to BFE pairs as authorized by an ACC. Each ACC maintains a database for a set of BFEs, and the database determines which pairs from that set (i.e., which pairs of user hosts behind the BFEs) are authorized to communicate and at what security levels.

The BLACKER system is MLS in three ways: (a) The BFEs form a security perimeter around a subnetwork, separating user hosts from the subnetwork, so that the subnetwork can operate at a different security level (possibly a lower, less expensive level) than the hosts. (b) The BLACKER components are trusted to separate datagrams of different security levels, so that each datagram of a given security level can be received only by a host that is authorized for that security level; and thus BLACKER can separate host communities that operate at different security levels. (c) The host side of a BFE is itself MLS and can recognize a security label on each packet, so that an MLS user host can be authorized

to successively transmit datagrams that are labeled with different security levels.