From Blueprint to Reality : Evaluating the Feasibility of Air-gapped Maven Builds

Sammanfattning

Organizations which have a strong need for secure computer networks may employ a type of security measure where one or more computers are physically isolated from other computer networks such as nearby local networks or the wider internet. This type of setup is known as an air-gapped computer network and is used in military facilities, financial institutions, medical devices, industrial control systems and more. While it can be efficient in securing a computer network, it impedes the function of many software tools vital to the software development process such as build automation tools which rely on an internet access to download required dependencies. This thesis describes a secure and efficient solution to software builds within an air-gapped network by describing the design requirements for such a system, followed by an implementation and evaluation of the system. The evaluation consisted of building 11 open source projects in the air-gap consisting of a total of 427 modules. The results showed that all 427 modules could be successfully built and vulnerable dependencies could be identified before initiating the build process. The conclusions from this are that secure and efficient software builds of complex projects in an air-gap are possible.