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FreeBSD 4.1.1 Includes RSA
Eladio McCormick writes: "Yeah, I know point releases are not by themselves huge news, but FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE represents a major event, in that the base distribution now includes RSA. Info on the release is online." We've had a number of submissions about this one -- good to see the patent come off, and encryption working its way into more things.
Didn't they say they would never do a 4.x.x release ? (only a 4.x)..
UPS Sucks
Does everything have to further Gnu Linux ? There are people like me who prefer FreeBSD for server applications. This is a great step to make more secure FreeBSD servers (and the next step will probably be the various Gnu Linux distributions including this.. Only FreeBSD did it first.
UPS Sucks
This the way server need to be secure when you install it. I hope that more linux distros start doing this also. When will they start incorperating RSA in thier distros.
I'm rebuilding all my machines already :)
dopp
-- If a god of love and life ever did exist, he's long since dead. Someone, something, rules in his place
and i just got 4.1 working right
Is RSA being included in the filesystem, kernel, as a library, in ssh, what? Including RSA by itself does not mean a damn thing. Useing it for some purpose might be interesting, depending on the purpose, but just including it does not.
Please use your mirrors. I know not all of them have updated, but there are a TON of mirrors (ftp..freebsd.org) and usually even there you have a number of ftp sites. Like, for instance, ftp5.freebsd.org has most of 4.1.1-RELEASE ready.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
There are also people who prefer FreeBSD for desktop applications.
Its all good. The more cryptography gets into more computers, the more difficult it will become for governments to regulate it. Computers will become more secure, and crackers will become less of a black hat for government agencies. The linux distros ought to follow suit. Before long, folks will be encrypting everything. THEN, the FBI will have to do real investigating, instead of trolling for leads with Carnivore. It means more freedom.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
So you get your feeling of "signifigance" from the Operating System on your desktop?
I pity you...
I just downloaded red hat 7.0 and loaded it onto a test machine. I noticed on bootup that it loads some RSA stuff.
Just letting you know that if you absolutely want to go play with this (something I plan to do now that I saw it's already on my test box) and the mirrors you are getting BSD from are full, red hat has it, too.
Wheeeee
nuff said.
> But this does nothing to get Linux onto
> mainstream desktops.
Nor does it do anything to make lemons bigger or encourage owls to explode.
Perhaps that's because it isn't intending to do any of these things, and nobody is suggesting that it should?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I was following the discussion on -stable, and it looks like one of developers said something on IRC about a 4.1.1, and later said "well, I guess I'm stuck now." or something along those lines.
-- Absinthe, absinthe@jlc.net
http://www.landofsunshine.net
This time next year, look at the number of products that appeared since the patent expired, and the ways they use it.
Where do you see the innovation happening?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I hate when people screw that up. "It's not that bloody difficult!"
--
Absinthe, absinthe@jlc.net
http://www.landofsunshine.net
hmmm... can anyone else make sense out of this one?
--
Absinthe, absinthe@jlc.net
http://www.landofsunshine.net
RSA actually isn't very complex (relatively speaking, of course). It's been in any decent college-level discrete mathematics textbook for years. CS students are taught to do it in their heads (mind you, the human brain is a lot slower than a computer at this sort of thing, but the algorithm holds).
So no, it's no surprise that the BSD folks could get an implementation going. The Mozilla folks have had their OSS RSA out for a week already.
And, oh yeah, [i]everyone [/i]wanted RSA, even when you had to pay for a license. What we were mad about was RSA's abuse of the patent system (never mind the issues of software patents; they had freely published this themselves for so long that in any sane country it would be considered prior art; in fact they published it for so long that even by the US system it should have been considered as such).
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It might sound a bit silly, but this isn't actually such a bad idea. At least it would make for some killer marketing:
FreeBSD.
Encouraging owls to explode since the year 2000.
--
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
Will this now give freebsd the power to actually give openbsd some competition? imagine these 2 oses going after the title of "most secure os, out of the box". THat would rock.
it has to do w/ the level of integration, RH7 has the RSA stuff, it just doesn't go as deep. Just wait for 7.1 or whatever if you don't wanna go BSD.
Total non-sequetor. Youve read so much between lines that it appears you didn't read the original lines. You are the one who comes over very poorly with your follow-up.
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
So you get your feeling of "signifigance" from the Operating System on your desktop?
Signifigance has nothing to do with it. Linux is suppose to be about choice. Well some of us chose FreeBSD instead. I run both. Linux has its advantages,as does BSD. I tend to go more towards BSD for several reasons but sometimes I use linux. Other people feel the same way.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
This is a FTP-only release, to integrate the overseas and US versions of FreeBSD.
The release of RSA was deemed important enough to warrant this. It gives a convenient install point for those of us who want RSA on a production system and don't want to bother with upgrading after install.
After all, 4.1-RELEASE is rock-solid, there's no other reason to upgrade.
Yeah, and everytime i touch the network settings, or perform some other essential MS function like moving the mouse, I can spend half the day rebooting. I'll stick with my BSD and Linux.
We often criticize Windows for being "bloatware", but, come on, do we really need RSA included with our operating systems? It's a 3-second download. All the linux distros keep including surreal quantities of insecure crap in the default install. A 2GB drive provides barely enough room to install the latest Redhat w/ a swap partition. That is completely insane. Then of course, there's all kinds of fun exploits on 90% of the installed programs, most of which are useless crap. I mean, chargen? WTF needs that? The latest wuftpd SITE EXEC vulnerability (again, default) is just another example of how insecure this half-assed written, feature-driven evolution of open source software of today is. ("Ooh, it would be neat if you could execute remote commands via FTP! Who needs a TERMINAL when you've got FTP??") Notice the closed source NIX's like SunOS and IRIX don't have this problem. And a default install of any version of Windows doesn't either! And it never could! Why? Because random crap is not included with Windows the way it is with Linux distros. I can see why by default, say, xpdf is installed, but, Apache?! No wonder the open source alternatives are lagging behind in terms of desktop use vs. server use. Maybe once someone realizes that in order to properly market open source software, they need to go in and take out all the "that would be cool" half-assed written crap, and maybe then, consumers can begin to respect Linux/FreeBSD for security, reliability, and ease of use, as they should.
---
I am the dot in slashdot.org
Damn you!
I just spat a mouthfull of coffee all over my shiny new SGI monitor laughing at that!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
This isn't directly related to RSA, but it got me thinking: now that strong crypto isn't considered a 'munition' anymore, it'd really be a good time to start including the IPSEC hooks for FreeS/WAN in the stock Linux kernel. FreeS/WAN is a great package, and it enables really good VPN's to be done on a shoestring. Unfortunately, it requires a kernel patch. I'd like to see the relevant IPSEC hooks in the stock kernel now.
--
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This is not something "new" for FreeBSD. For some time the base system has included RSA based encryption (for OpenSSH). What is new is that there is now only one distribution, not a USA version and an International version.
What occurred in the past was that the RSA code could come from two sources - a USA patented version, which required a licence for commercial use, and an international free version (which was also cleaner and faster). If you were a USA resident you were required to install the librsa port to obtain RSA based encryption.
Since the changes in the patent, there is now no need for the RSA Data Security library, and so the international library is used in all cases, and we now longer have to have two seperate distributions, and all of the Makefile goop to handle having two slightly different libs for USA/non USA.
It also means that RSA can be used commercially without a licence.
Regards,
-Jeremy (reg@FreeBSD.org)
OpenBSD has sftp support now. http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ ssh/Makefile
Please click on "parent", the Slashdot threaded view doesn't always display the correct parent. My remark was to another posting, and I didn't need to read between the lines at all on that one.
it's an ftp-only release, no CDs will be burnt until November when 4.2 will be rolling our way.
There was a lot of people who wanted to ditch rsaref and use better rsa implementations, so this release grants them that ability, for the small price of a little bandwidth.
"Don't trolls get tired?"
the big deal is that there isn't a USA and an international flavor anymore, there's one, count 'em one, flavor of RSA, and everything can feel free to depend on it.
/etc/X11/xdm to ave a -nolisten tcp option tagged on... if you're running gnome, you probably want ORBIIOPIPv4=0
/usr/local/etc/orbitrc, kern_securelevel_enable="YES" should be set as well as kern_securelevel="3"...etc etc etc...
what occured was a very useful change, it gets rid of a lot of USA_RESIDENT dependencies, simplifies things, and let's us americans use RSA commercially without a license, and use a fine implementation of it too.
oh, and as long as you're securing your system, shouldn't you change syslogd_flags to "-ss", have a firewall_enable="YES", edit rc.firewall appropriately and choose a firewall_type, edit Xservers in
ORBIIOPIPv6=0 added to your
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Actually, I don't. But I do feel that if you think Linux should be around for a while you want to get it to the desktop.
I honestly believe, and will continue to do so for some time until I see evidence to the contrary, that the only reason NT is used as a server for applications is because of its dominance of the desktop.
- I settled down long enough to write this and have now collected far too much dust. Damn Dust.
I don't think you understood. I don't think Linux is ready to be a mainstream desktop yet, and don't think it's viable for servers until it is. Bigger backing for existing Solaris, AIX, and HPUX will ensure they dominate servers.
- I settled down long enough to write this and have now collected far too much dust. Damn Dust.
I'd buy it.
- I settled down long enough to write this and have now collected far too much dust. Damn Dust.
OpenBSD does include a lot of extra junk, but a default installation has Apache, etc turned off by default.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Not really... They simply used the international version of RSA which is now publicly available. The code was released for quite some time, it is simply the patent that was preventing it from being distributed with the base OS.
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One of these days i'm going to find this 'peer' guy and reset HIS connection!
Well, as much as I hate to say something which might dispel your impression that BSD developers are amazing :-) this was actually very simple to achieve and involved REMOVING code which was keeping RSA *out* of the US version.
International folks have had real RSA since 4.0-RELEASE (and this was enabled by default on the releases by some third party CD distributors) - but as of 4.1.1 the main BSDi release of FreeBSD will have it enabled for all users.
Stay tuned. FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT has working sftp support (as does OpenBSD, where the code came from). It will likely be backported to 4.1.1-STABLE in a week or two.
Not only that, but Rivest did a "stealth release" of the paper - handing them out unannounced at the start of the meeting where he presented it.
One of the people in the audience then made a few hundred copies of his copy and anonymously snail-mailed them to potentially interested open-cryptography researchers all over the place.
The idea was to keep the US security agencies from putting this genie back in the bottle.
(Of course the US-only patent effectively kept open-source software authors in the US from using it, while the export rules kept the US commercial software authors in check. Smart move on the gov's part...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think a decent implementation of RSA does get more complicated. But you're right; the basic algorithm is pretty simple.
Also, unless I am misremembering, I think it's not illegal to experiment with patented ideas. Coding up RSA for research purposes, even if what you are researching is the feasibility of folding it into BSD when the patent expires, shouldn't have been illegal. They were probably working on it for a while.
--
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
There is a security hole fixed in 4.1.1.
Cryptography is not all that OpenBSD is about. OpenBSD more importantly is about highly audited code at the operating system level. That's why most vulnerabilities have been proactively fixed. Cryptography will do nothing for you if the application that uses it is vulnerable due to coding mistakes. SSH+RSAREF come to mind.
Go figure.
Personally, I think it's a crime the way the Wu Tang Clan has been a victim of the US Government's conspiracy to suppress rap music by outlawing the works of RZA and others for export. They are making it illegal to listen to the Wu, and that's against the first amendment guaranteeing freedom of information which needless to say should be free to make it's own (albeit informed) opinions.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Go look at The US-based kernel mirrors and tell us what you see there.
Sorry. In a way similar to your article's parent, your article could have been an equally misguided retort to the original. I wish slashdot would indicate that there are missing articles in the thread.
I was wrong, ooops.
Phil
Phil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Great! I've been waiting for sftp in OSSH for a while now! Yummy