Trusted Stripe

The trusted stripe appears in a reserved area at the bottom of the screen in all Trusted Solaris sessions. Its purpose is to give you a visual confirmation that you are in a legitimate Trusted Solaris session, to let you know when you are interacting with the trusted computing base, and to indicate the labels of your current workspace and window. The trusted stripe cannot be moved or obscured by other windows or dialog boxes. There are potentially two elements of the trusted stripe (depending on your site configuration):

• The trusted path symbol (required).

• The Window Label (optional).

Trusted Path Symbol

Whenever you access any portion of the trusted computing base, the trusted path symbol appears at the left of the trusted stripe area. (If your configuration suppresses labels, then the trusted path symbol appears with the trusted stripe to the left of the Front Panel as shown in Figure 4-3.) The trusted path symbol is not displayed when the pointer is focused in a window or area of the screen that does not affect security. The trusted path symbol cannot be forged; if you see it, you can be sure that you are safely interacting with the trusted computing base.

If the trusted stripe is missing from your window environment (other than when you lock your screen) or if the trusted path symbol is missing when you are attempting a security-related action, notify your Trusted Solaris administrator at once; there is a serious problem with your system. If the trusted stripe is visible when you lock your screen, this may be a problem as well.

Window Label Indicator

The Window Label indicator displays the label of the active window (the window that has the pointer focus). If you are working at one label at a time, this may be stating the obvious. However, in a multi-level session, you may have windows with different labels in the same workspace. For an example, see "Tour: Occupying Workspaces with Applications at Different Labels".