Slashdot Mirror
Crypto and IPSec Merged into 2.5
Corbet writes "Linus has just merged the new crypto API and IPSec implementation into his 2.5 BitKeeper tree. This is the first time that serious cryptographic code has made an appearance in the mainline kernel, and it will hopefully lead to more secure communications for all Linux users in the future."
This is great that these things are comming as standard in the kernel, but so many things are "standard" now its getting pretty large for joe-schmo average user who will get a full kitchen sink kernel with their distro.
This is also great for creating products like VPN gateways et al, but is it time to consider a different structure for kernel builds, with modules being seperately managed with a smarter installation procedure.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
In my experience, Windows 2000's support for IPSec is one reason why it has snared a foothold in many businesses. Having IPSec in mainstream Linux distributions would let us cut Bill off at the pass.
I hope we're not far from seeing adoption of Linux in places like the financial services industry. If the distributors can make IPSec painless to configure, Linux will make inroads in such industries very quickly.
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
Does this create any export ramifications since Linus ( and i assume the code he reviews/packages )is now located here in the states?
Just curious.. i know how hard of a time everyone else ( like BSD ) has with this garbage.
Information should never be restricted on the basis of governmental boundries. Phfft.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Freedom of speech also implies freedom of anonymous, or even encrypted speech, a concept that politicians have destroyed completely with "campaign reform."
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Well, seeing as this isn't FreeSWAN, maybe you want to restate your objections? I mean, complaining about FreeSWAN when talking about putting ipsec in the kernel, doesn't make much sense if it isn't FreeSWAN that they are using...
But on the other hand, who wants to read the article when you can, instead, spout off and look like an idiot?
Two examples are the need for a "nexthop" parameter, when the kernel already has this information in its routing tables; and the need to turn off route filtering. Both make it clear that freeswan is not properly integrated (and if you look at the freeswan docs, you'll see that this general problem been on the "to fix" list for a long time).
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Why no fork yet?
Because it's a large project, it's really complex, and it's a bitch to keep up with things.
I should know - I'm the author of Super FreeS/WAN, a pseudo fork with includes alot of patches (NAT-T, X.509 Certs, AES/Blowfish/etc... ) @ http://www.freeswan.ca/code/super-freeswan
It takes a few hours a day to stay on top of things. One the major ones is user support. IPSec is not easy to configure currently, especially once you introduce X.509 certs & MS Windows clients using any number of clients. So there's hundred of questions about configs, how tos, etc...
If you want to fork it, please, go ahead. Just remember that a fork isn't just the code - you take users with you.
One man's bloat is another man's features.
Hypothetical: I can't believe OpenOffice is so bloated compared to EDLIN from MS-DOS!
Maybe it's "feature loaded" instead of bloated? While it is true that you can use OpenOffice to duplicate tasks that you might have done in EDLIN, it is capable of so much more.
There is another kind of bloat which is not caused by features. This kind of bloat does not appear to be present in Linux. The kind of bloat I'm talking about is caused by "optimization". I don't mean optimizing for fast code or small code, but optimizing for "release date". Hey Mr. Customer, would take that new spreadsheet upgrade six months sooner if it required 25% more computing resources to run? All consumers I know would answer Yes. So this is a type of optimization. Optimizing for development time instead of optimizing for computer resources. Given the current low and decreasing cost of computer resources, there is some balance of this that makes sense. Just as once upon a time the "bloat" and value of high level programming languages was hugely debated. Now everyone uses high level languages to optimize for development time. The fact that I could spend six extra months doing it smaller and faster in assembler doesn't matter. Well, today it's the same thing. I don't mean that bad code is written on purpose, just that development time is valued above comptuer resources and machine optimizations, profiling, etc. Again, Linux does not appear to "suffer" from this type of "optimization".
Another type of bloat is just from plain bad programming. It was not a purposeful decision to optimize development time, it was just the the program is badly written. Linux does not appear to suffer from this kind of bloat either.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
My un-favorite types of Bloat: :{)||
- In Apps, Games, whatever, it would be a lot nicer to be able to add features, rather than have the whole bloated thing copied/downloaded/installed onto your drive. (Cygwin has a nice setup.exe program that actually lets the user *pick* what he wants *before* the download. Very nice.)
- Programs that say "Standby while we figure out what system you are running" and then copy every bloated driver for every type system, and its various peripherals, that ever existed onto your hard drive, anyway. Maybe this is not a problem anymore with the huge disks that exists these days, but it does signify sloppy development work that is usually mirrored in the app.
I am not very knowledgeable about security issues, but I am curious if the inclusion of security modules in the kernel will provide for a single point of failure. In other words, as more programs become dependent on the kernel module for security, if an exploit becomes available, will all these dependent programs become exploitable?
I ask this specifically because of the problem the IE ran into, where it depended on security APIs from Windows, the Windows API had an exploitable bug, and ta-da, IE had an exploitable bug.First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.