On 9/23/07, Jason Dixon  wrote:

quoted text
> On Sep 22, 2007, at 12:00 PM, Darrin Chandler wrote:

>

> > On Sat, Sep 22, 2007 at 11:34:33AM -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:

> >> Linux has SELinux in its 2.6 kernel and debian has gone ahead and

> >> compiled SELinux into the libraries, although the SELinux policies

> >> aren't ready on debian yet.  The whole focus seems to be to make

> >> Linux

> >> "more secure".  I'm not sure what to make of it.  I figure that if

> >> you

> >> want secure, you switch to OBSD.

> >>

> >> Could someone who knows both the details of OBSDs security

> >> enhancements

> >> and the details of SELinux comment?

> >

> > I don't know all the details, and especially not the SELinux details,

> > but that won't stop me from commenting.

> >

> > Not long ago I was talking with a Linux person about security, and

> > they

> > pointed me to a set of patches that did a lot of nifty stuff. Good

> > stuff, like the things you find OpenBSD doing. But it's not in the

> > mainline kernel, it's a set of patches.

> >

> > Security should not be grafted on, it should be integrated into the

> > main development process.

yes you're right. Although that point no longer holds. SELinux is more

or less "official" now. But for a looong (long) time, it was pretty

apparent what the focus of the developers was *not* on.... And even

now so.... (IMO)
> > I'm sure the patch maintainers are doing

quoted text
> > their

> > best, but this doesn't change the fundamental flaw in the process.

> > It's

> > not a flaw of their making, it's inherent in the situation. But it's

> > still a flaw.

> >

> > Compare that to a complete operating system (OpenBSD) where

> > security is part of

> > code quality, and part of the normal mainline development.

>

> If I could add one thing to Darrin's comment (of which I agree

> completely), it would be this:

>

> SELinux is a button.  Buttons are easy to turn off.

>

button, yes. The scary (or "interesting", depending on how you see it)

bit is that there is a whole infrastructure (LKM) behind it making it

easy(?) to create, and plug in your own buttons to do your own funky

stuff...
-jf
--

In the meantime, here is your PSA:

"It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would not help."

    -- Andrew Fear, Software Product Manager, NVIDIA Corporation

http://kerneltrap.org/node/7228