System information software environment

Software environment is commonly used to refer to support anapplication. A software environment for a particular application could include the operating system, the database system, specific development tools or compiler. The Software Environment category in System Information contains information about your system configuration, including details about system drivers, environment variables, and current print jobs. In Software Environment, you can view information about the following items:

System Drivers- Drivers is located in the Software Environment category in System Information. It displays information about the system drivers that are installed on your system, including their name, description, type, state, and status. For example, you can check the State column in the details pane to see which drivers are running and which are stopped., Signed Drivers - Certified Drivers is located in the Software Environment category in System Information. It displays information about the signed drivers that are installed on your system, including their name, description, type, state, and status. Signed drivers are drivers that have been certified by Microsoft.,Environment Variables - Environment Variables is located in the Software Environment category in System Information. It displays your environment variables, which might contain information about your computer environment, including the number of processors, the operating system path, and the location of temporary folders.

Print Jobs,Network Connections System Information

Running Tasks,Loaded Modules,Services,Program Groups

Startup Programs,OLE Registration,Windows Error Reporting

 

 

What is the information flow?

The Information Flow – the movement of information objects from point of origin to “target” user over time.

simple objects may combine to form complex objects;

the object modified along the way;

the object may be used ai different points in the flow;

there is no end user.

All aspects of information provision should be considered,not just WWW.

Information flow in an information theoretical context is the transfer of information from a variable x to a variable y in a given process. Not all flows may be desirable. For example, a system shouldn't leak any secret (partially or not) to public observers.

Information flows can be divided in two major categories. The simplest one is explicit flow, where some secret is explicitly leaked to a publicly observable variable. In the following example, the secret in the variable h flows into the publicly observable variable l.

var l, h

l:= h

The other flows fall into the side channel category. For example, in the timing attack or in the power analysis attack, the system leaks information through, respectively, the time or power it takes to perform an action depending on a secret value.

In the following example, the attacker can deduce if the value of h is one or not by the time the program takes to finish:

var l, h

if h = 1 then

(* do some time-consuming work *)

l:= 0

Another side channel flow is the implicit information flow, which consists in leakage of information through the program control flow. The following program (implicitly) discloses the value of the secret variable h to the variable l. In this case, since the h variable is boolean, all the bits of the variable of h is disclosed (at the end of the program, l will be 3 if h is true, and 42 otherwise).

var l, h

if h = true then

l:= 3

Else

l:= 42