Slashdot Mirror

http://www.research.ibm.com/trl/projects/security/ ssp/
http://www.immunix.org/

Theres others, just cant think of the names...

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It would be nice if operating systems could protect applications from each other.... Are there any operating systems that do that?

My prayers have been answered, yes there are and discusing them on slashdot should have heaponed eons ago... With computers taking more sick days then people you would think people would be asking for a secure OS when they buy a new pc at compusa.

Its called capability based acces control (first implemented in the 70`s). Its just a fancy way of saying that rather then having a program get rights becouse of whoever executes it it gets all sorts of rights all by itself.... yes thats an improvement security wise becouse this way a process can get only the rights it needs.

Ofcourse you could go and build an all new operating system for this priciple. However many operating systems have been hacked to do tiny bits of this already. In fact many personal firewalls do it for windows (I never though I would be advocating something called a firewall considering I tend to call firwalls "stupid packet filters", and claim they do little for security) Ofcourse open operating systems have plenty of implementations of this idea. Now if only people were to ask microsoft for stuff like this. Windows is full of crazy features that are there becouse big customers needed them. With microsoft giving up on their "(backwards) compatibility before anything else" idea (XP sp2) structural changes might someday make it into windows. Ofcourse thats only if paying customers want them.

Excellent post. Moving away from C/C++ is a good idea for many projects, but since there's far too much C/C++ code out there for that to be a universal solution, we need to see wider deployment of stackguarding compilers like the propolice and stackguard patches to gcc 3.x. We also need to look at easy migration paths from C/C++ to a type-safe language, like Cyclone, a type-safe dialect of C.

What steps has linux put forth to make sure buffer overruns dont happen? I have seen programs that bost that they can detect and fix the error in code (Stackguard). Now, why hasnt GCC implemited this idea. It seems to me protecting it so the code cant buffer overflow AND the kernel cant would fix alot of problems.(Apache)(How to)

• UML
• ipsec
• ebtables & bridge-netfilter
• robert love's preemptable patch
• LSM-hooks (which make not everybody happy:grsecurity, RSBAC
• LS-module SE-linux
• filesystem-encryption
• apci 2.5 backports
• Kernel .config
• DVB-support

They must have beaten up Linus to get all those accepted ...

/graf0z.

My thesis project involves a module similar to SELinux and I have found that the best 2.6 kernel for messing around with it is actually the BK tree mantained by the Linux Security Modules (LSM) project. Technically SELinux is one module that is part of the LSM project but the two are often referred to synonymously. LSM is at: immunix and you can check out their kernel branch for extra features that are not yet in mainline 2.6 (and may not get in at all if the kernel maintainers aren't confortable with the changes)

My personal project is actually a big modification of the Domain & Type enforcement that is present in LSM now. but the code is nowhere near ready for inclusion just yet ;)

It should be in the 'Security' menu option when you configure the kernel.

Specifically, lwn.net/Distributions/index.php3#secure and possibly also the special purpose distros (mini, floppy, cd, whatever).

Engarde, Immunix, and Openwall are all designed to be secure platforms for server or firewall development.

If you want something small, you might look at LEAF or Coyote or Wolverine. Coyote is free, Wolverine is $30-$120 depending on which license you need.

Personally, I'm using Astaro (free for personal use). It seems to be well designed from a security perspective (everything is chrooted, etc.), but it is not easy to customize the web interface, etc. A 'pluspack' is downloadable which includes gcc, etc, or you can compile on RedHat if you have the right versions of all the libraries.

It's as if a well fed westerner telling a poor hungry 3rd world citizen to stay away from the truffles because they will give him a bad case of indigestion. Hypocritical at best...

So, are you saying that I don't believe that Monster.com is a scumbag organization? That I have some sekrit plan to keep the joyous motherlode of high-quality opportunities at Monster.com all for my eviil self?

Perhaps you might consider that I am an employer, and that therefore my views on where I will and won't look for candidates might be of some use to job seekers.

So for those who might actually care, when I am recruiting I post & read in these kinds of forums:

• local Linux user group mailing lists (we are a Linux vendor)
• local system administration mailing lists (I have high respect for admins as potential developers)
• Craig's List
• Security Jobs
• "networking", i.e. friends of friends

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Advice to job seekers: never, ever, ever deal with Monster.com or their subsidiaries. I have monster.com and flipdog.com in my spam filters.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

I was looking at the list of speakers, and damn, it's impressive.

• Brian Hatch - author of Hacking Linux Exposed, Building Linux VPNs, and the Linux Security newsletter, talking about Linux Security

• Brian "Krow" Aker, slash guru and author of "Running weblogs with Slash" from O'Reilly and one of the Slashdot team, talking about how to optimize MySQL for high traffic websites.

• Dr Crispin Cowan of WireX, creator of things like StackGuard, FormatGuard, and Immunix

• Dr Tim Maher, a white camel award recipient and the guy who runs the Seattle perl user group, talking about shell and perl that should be seen by everyone, based on his upcoming book

This promises to be a really cool - I look forward to going up there this weekend!

I was looking at the list of speakers, and damn, it's impressive.

• Brian Hatch - author of Hacking Linux Exposed, Building Linux VPNs, and the Linux Security newsletter, talking about Linux Security

• Brian "Krow" Aker, slash guru and author of "Running weblogs with Slash" from O'Reilly and one of the Slashdot team, talking about how to optimize MySQL for high traffic websites.

• Dr Crispin Cowan of WireX, creator of things like StackGuard, FormatGuard, and Immunix

• Dr Tim Maher, a white camel award recipient and the guy who runs the Seattle perl user group, talking about shell and perl that should be seen by everyone, based on his upcoming book

This promises to be a really cool - I look forward to going up there this weekend!

What about stackguard? Why isn't it in use everywhere? Or libsafe for that matter? Or Openwall Project kernel patch for Linux? Can anyone please tell me why no one uses it?

Yes that's what distributions like Immunix do, but notice that even with the extra protection they offer they still update their packages everytime a new hole is discovered.

Stackguard isn't a magic bullet, and isn't gonna stop you from being 0wn3ed. Typically it just means that the released exploits won't work, and that's also the case for odd architechtures like Alpha - most of the released exploits are for intel, so avoiding that gives you as much protection as the stack guard compiler.

The same with the no-exec patch from Solar Designer, which Linus keeps vetoing for Linux; it gives you protection from the commonly released exploits, but via return-into-libc attacks, etc, you can still be rooted.

Use it if you like, but don't think it protects you completely..

StackGuard is a compiler that emits programs hardened against "stack smashing" attacks. Stack smashing attacks are the most common form of penetration attack. Programs that have been compiled with StackGuard are largely immune to stack smashing attack. Protection requires no source code changes at all.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

• The Blair Witch Project: made $140M on a budget of $35K
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding: made $240M in the US alone on a budget of $5M

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Similar, but less pronounced effect for "The Fifth Element". Also for "Sunset". Hmmm ... maybe it's just people don't get Bruce Willis :-)

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Web page from Sun on scalability

Note that it doesn't describe what happens between 1 and 4 CPUs.

Linux kernel compilation benchmark, showing that 4 CPUs each crunch about 94% of what 1 cpu can crunch

Now, 94% is some serious CPU utilization. The best results from Sun's marketing brochures don't quite touch that. More recently IBM has taken scalability in linux up to a much larger number of processors (no barriers existed in source code, the developers just didn't have 128 CPU machines to play with).

So, no, I don't think SMP scalability has any relevance to choosing Sun/IBM/HP/Tru64 linux. It is strictly a hardware issue.

There are SOME things big iron has - like better logical volume management (I am familiar with Tru64 resizeable file systems and domains). I am beginning to think, however, the niche for which big iron UNIX has an advantage over linux is fairly small, and growing smaller and smaller by the year.

You are forgetting the never-ending stream of annoying, worthless, tax-payer funded, left-wing drivel.

Ah, yes, what I refer to as "the truth." That's my favorite part of NPR. Quite the refreshing change from all that right-wing propaganda about how we have to destroy "Saaddam Huusayn" before he destroys us.

NPR is the only thing worth listening to on radio. If I can't get NPR, I switch to "off." I sure as hell am not going to pay XM $10/month for muzak.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

AT&T got me started on SMS with a "free for now ..." package, then switched to one where incoming is free, and outgoing costs 10 cents each. So I adapted and basically never send a text message from my phone. However, it is handy that you can e-mail messages to an AT&T cell phone at 5055551234@mobile.att.net (i.e. insert appropriate phone number) for no cost. So I regularly e-mail my wife's cell phone from my desktop.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Isn't this kind of ideology exactly what let to the 'dot-com crash'. People invested lots of capital in companies that people enjoyed but weren't necessarily very profitable. I think google is the latest subject to this phenomenon. Although I could be,and hope that I am, wrong.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

When a professor is first accepted to the faculty of a university, he/she must "publish or perish" for the first 5(+[?]) years. If you do not publish often enough in those first years, you are not retained.

I personally think the requirements of universities should change so that we are not searching through a glut of papers,

I suppose univeritiy policy could marginally affect this by having the university library summarily unsubscribe from 2/3 of the journals & conferences they receive.

Be careful what you wish for; you might get it :-)

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

There are a few kernel patches or custom packages that do this.
StackGuard is one, and GrSecurity is another.

They will break any apps that depend on insecure behavior to function, but said apps can be either fixed or abandoned for alternatives.

I disagree with the author's basic assumption: that the purpose of science is to find a higher truth, for its own sake, and that benefits to humanity are merely tangential spinoffs. I think science's purpose should be to create things that will improve the human condition, especially in fields of inquiry such as biology, where the results of scientific research can have almost immediate, tangible results on people.

Heard at a conference 10 years ago:

• Scientists build stuff in order to learn stuff.
• Engineers learn stuff in order to build stuff.

Seriously, since you're the THIRD person posting this, *and* the site is performing fine, I assure you, down moderations are *extremely* necessary for your karma-whoring ass.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Kudos to Albina Fuel.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

So, if an open source project were to arise that did a better job of writing recognition, it could be a "killer app" that gets more of the mainstream PC users interested in Linux desktops.

Caveat: no, I'm not going to do it. My research area is security, not HCI.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Thus the Army must have some kind of non-broadcast communications system. I have no direct knowledge of how they would do it, but it isn't hard to imagine. For example, suppose low-flying satelites broadcast a signal. Handsets on the ground listen for that signal, and then point a highly directional antenna (LASER, focussed RF or microwave, whatever) at the satelite, and then starts transmitting a narrow beam.

There is not enough economic motive to develop this for purely commercial purposes. But once it is developed for the military, the commercial benefits are there to deploy it. Directional signalling means much less interference, and therefore much less consumption of precious spectrum, and less need for those pesky and expensive cell towers.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Security vulnerabilities are discovered, become publicly known, get exploited by attackers, and patches come out. When should one apply security patches? Patch too soon, and you may suffer from instability induced by bugs in the patches. Patch too late, and you get hacked by attackers exploiting the vulnerability. We explore the factors affecting when it is best to apply security patches, providing both mathematical models of the factors affecting when to patch, and collecting empirical data to give the model practical value. We conclude with a model that we hope will help provide a formal foundation for when the practitioner should apply security updates.

So while you can putz around and try to integrate a bunch of differently-timed old memory cards onto a single mobo, or you can just go spend $50 on a new stick for the same benefit. The choice is pretty clear.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

There are countless people in the American animation world with adult stories they'd like to tell, but the only new work Cartoon Network is willing to fund is stuff about on the same intellectual and graphical level as South Park.

So while your point about Adult Swim being unwilling to undertake new adult animation, you can get down off your high horse about South Park: it is far better than what most wanna-be's produce.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

But this is different: /. posted the story before anyone else posted anything (I just went and looked at a bunch of sources, and the story isn't out yet as of this writing). OMG: /. doing actual journalism!

Must be a sign of the Apocalypse :-)

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

• User: I want to be able to share my schedule contacts and project info.
• admin: sure we can install exchange it will cost $$$$$$, ohh yea it also runs on Win2k.
• User: Fine, whatever, just tell me when it's done and don't bug me with details.
• admin: what about all of that mimlinda, in lisa and melissa and code red stuff?
• User: Which part of 'don't bug me with details' was unclear? Just do it.

For that matter, we could use an open source drop-in replacement for Outlook, where "drop-in" means "works with Exchange." I've heard that Evolution does it, but I've also heard that Evolution employs a proprietary module to get to the Exchange Calendaring functionality.

If I'm wrong here, I'd love to be corrected. Preferably with URLs pointing to code :-)

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

How is it Nintendo et. al. can program an incredibly skilled Tetris AI, but scientists at MIT cannot?

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

What intrigues me about the globular cluster black hole (or a galactic black hole) is that the black hole can form around you, rather than you having to enter it. This gets you around the problem of infinite time dialation approaching the event horizon, as well as the hellacious hard radiation and gravitational tides that exist near black holes. So you could postulate fairly normal things like planets, cities, space ships, etc. being trapped inside a black hole that formed around them. Might be a spiffy basis for an SF novel, in the tradition of Dragon's Egg and Mission of Gravity.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

So what is up here? Since when do black holes occupy so much space (I thought they were points)?

This would seem to imply that, in theory, a very large black hole could have rather low density inside the event horizon. It seems to me that a black hole could spontaneously form around a particularly dense cluster of stars if it was large enough and they all happened to clump together.

But my head starts to hurt thinking about what happens to physics when a region of normal space suddenly finds itself inside a black hole like that. I am definitely not a physicist, so I can't explain what goes on inside a black hole, or if my globular cluster black hole is even possible.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

I doubt any national TV stations other than TechTV read slashdot,...

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

1. Get a lightweight, 2-prong extension cord.
2. Do not plug it in yet.
3. Bare the ends, and wrap them around two medium-large nails.
4. Insert the nails into the pickle.
5. With all hands off the pickle and the bare metal, plug in the cord.
6. Observe that the pickle glows around the contact points with the nails.

• Never tough the pickle or the bare metal while the cord is plugged in: shock hazard (duh :-)
• Put the pickle on a non-conductive surface, e.g. sheet of wood.
• Consider doing it out doors, as it smokes and is smelly.
• Adult supervision required. You assume all risk.

... Clegg states quite frankly that it was Waterloo who first proposed the idea of C# as a teaching language. So this initiative did not come from MS.

I have been corresponding with some Waterloo faculty (I am a UW alum) and learned that the University Administration sprang it on the departments as a surprise, without consulting with the curriculum committees. Computer Science (in the Math Faculty) was adroit enough to avoid getting caught in this meat grinder, but ECE (part of the Engineering Faculty) was not so lucky, and had this agreement announced on top of them.

So whether it came from Microsoft or not, it did not come from the faculty, and thus was fundamentally motivated by money.

Crispin, U.Waterloo BMath/CS class of 1988
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Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

C++ has a weak type system? C++?

C++ has a cute "typesystem", in that there are class libraries that do some checking (such as the string class you allude to) but this is not strong typing.

C++: The safety of C, with the performance of Smalltalk.

Crispin, Waterloo class of '88, and not particularly proud of it any more :-(
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

With video phones, it would immediately become clear that we busy 21st century people don't have the time or patience to be attentive throughout an electronic conversation. It also would make answering the phone in one's underwear riskier, and might make people feel like they needed to be made up and dressed well when in their own homes.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

1. Go waaaaay far out in space.
2. Get a really powerful telescope.
3. Point it back at Earth.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase