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Debian Hardened Aims For Security
larryg writes "Debian Hardened is a new project that wants be an official Debian sub-project. It aims to provide a complete tree of hardened kernel and software packages for a standard Debian distribution, without changing to another like Adamantix and making easy the hardening of any machine running Debian GNU/Linux. The hardened kernels use the grSecurity patch and some of the Adamantix kernel patches; also, its packages are compiled with the ProPolice/SSP gcc extension and some libraries to prevent and trace buffer overflow attacks. Also, and as a second project, we are working on some enhacements against the Linux Entropy Pool engine, using an external TRNG (True Random Numbers Generator) device which uses thermal noise and also the atomic decay from a Geiger counter, making true unpredictable random numbers."
Doesn't provide as many choices or the technological /security understanding of Hardened Gentoo
(not to mention the very similar name)
http://hardened.gentoo.org
How is this going to be different than just installing Woody and applying the lids kernel patch to your particular kernel and locking the system down that way?
Being a slackware guy myself, I still would very much like to inspect this branch when released....
I still think the less you have the more secure it is.... as long as what you have isnt bloated. Thats why in my opinion slackware is great on security.
So if this thing is more than one iso image ill be rather skeptical since debian tends to be a very large distro...
Sometimes the majority just means all the morons are on the same side.
Debian's team can implement it a certain way and whatever amazing thing they cook-up can be re-used by the Gentoo team!
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I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Has anyone ever,ever,ever compromised a computer or encrypted document by predicting the output of a random number generator?
Would the time not be better spent looking for the next OpenSSH/SSL hole?
I'm not trolling, most security flaws come from everyday apps rather than esoteric problems.
I'm a Hardened Gentoo user; although, I only use a subset of all the hardened herd's efforts :) I actually do understand what I'm doing, though, and am trying to spread that understanding myself. I am in no way affiliated with [Hardened] Gentoo or Debian.
At any rate, these people don't understand that they'll need more drastic changes. Why not bring attention to http://d-sbd.alioth.debian.org/ while you're at it? This is my project, just a demonstrational effort to bring these things to the attention of the Debian maintainers.
The idea isn't to have a hardened "Enhancement," but rather to incorporate anything you can put in that won't hurt. For example, you can compile glibc, gnome, and bash with SSP/ProPolice, and nothing else will use ProPolice but those. Those programs also won't be hurt by ProPolice. We can extend this to, "Compile any program or library that won't break with it with SSP." The user will never notice; but it'll stop a range of attacks.
My point is that you need to aim low. A hardened system like Hardened Gentoo or Adamantix will supply you with *everything* -- PaX, SSP, ET_DYN binaries, rediculously complicated MAC systems, firewalling maybe, network sniffers, etc. A non-hardened distribution should look at each of these, determine which don't change the end user's experience (administrator included), and implement them. This is "Do what's easy" rather than "Do EVERYTHING we possibly can," but it's still better than just being lame in the area of security.
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I'm curious as to why they chose the particular tools they did. I don't know too much about these issues, but from what I understand the NSA's selinux patches are a very robust and powerful set of tools. IIRC Redhat has been integrating it into their systems. It may be that this isn't the best choice, but I'd be curious if someone who knows them well could give us a rundown of why some solutions might be better/worse.
One issue with selinux I (think) I understand is that in order for applications to run properly you need to have predefined rules which allow them to do what they need to do (the nature of MAC is they can't do anything except what is explicitly allowed, as I understand it). This is possible for servers, which do only a few jobs repeatedly, but for a desktop machine with hundreds of potential applications to fire up and more being developed such a burden becomes huge. A normal user would end up turning off MAC in order to use the computer the way they want to, unless each application they want or may want to use already has a default ruleset present. I would be really happy to see this happen - various distributions collaborate on default rules for large numbers of applications, so end users could actually use systems that are seriously hardened. I know it's probably overkill, but given what casual Windows users on the network have done over the years (as well as unsecured Linux boxes and other OSes, for that matter) I think if some combination of projects could deliver a usable desktop machine with mandatory access control and any other features which might defend their box while letting it be useful would be a Very Good Thing. One thing is for sure - too little security does more harm to the internet community than having more protection than you need.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
how is Hardened Debian going to be different from installing the harden* packages?
If you look at the SElinux download page you can read the following tidbit:
In other words, SElinux comes with the kernel.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sometimes I get a feeling saying that people spend too much time thinking about security in the OSS world. Security is important, but as mentioned earlier, has a system's security for example ever been compromised because of insecure random number generation?
It's just like the VPN softwares around. Take for example IPsec/FreeSWAN and OpenVPN. OpenVPN offers great security using SSL and TLS. Both those protocols are in the present time considered secure and it's fairly simple to setup.
IPsec on the other hand, takes the concept of security to a whole new level. This affects the overall software, turning it into a pain to set up and understand. And in order to make full use of the security you have to understand how it works.
I bet many security issues arises out of misconfiguration due to unnecessary complexity in the software. Keep it simple stupid is the way to go.
My point is: isn't secure security enough? Does it have to be better?