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.

Comments

And..

[SirGeek]

Didn't they say they would never do a 4.x.x release ? (only a 4.x)..

Default Secure

[jjr]

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.

Red Hat 7.0

[heliocentric]

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.

Re:Great RSA in your basic distribution...

[MartinG]

> 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?

Way to Promote Innovation, Guys!

[Greyfox]

RSA's been patented for 17 years now. Look at the number of products that use it, and the ways it's used in those products.

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?

Re:Way to Promote Innovation, Guys!

[sjames]

The innovation happened when RSA was developed. Maybe, had they not gotten a patent, RSA would have never publicized their algorithm. Maybe instead they would have kept it as a trade secret, releasing only closed-source binary implementations of it.

RSA was published before a patent was granted (And before an algorythm could be patented at all, indicating that the work was done under the belief that it could NEVER be patented), and was developed with public funds. The patent was an afterthought. The patent system encouraged nothing but price gouging.

Re:cryptography does not a secure system make

[bero-rh]

Right, but it definitely adds to security and makes it easier to build a secure system.

If someone sniffs on your connection and you're using telnet, enjoy.
If someone sniffs on your connection and you're using ssh (basically == telnet+cryptography), not too much of a problem.

Re:Amazing

[Millennium]

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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FreeS/WAN in Linux?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

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.
--

Re:FreeS/WAN in Linux?

[drudd]

They've dealt with this issue on the Kernel mailing list, and I believe the problem is that it would prevent the kernel's distribution in other countries which still don't allow the export/import/use of crypto. Since nobody wants to cut out potential users of Linux, crypo will have to remain an extra patch.

Doug

What "RSA in the base system" really means...

[reg]

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)