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OpenBSD 4.5 Released

Posted by timothy on from the belts-and-suspenders-and-guns-and-mines dept.

portscan writes "OpenBSD 4.5 has been released. New and extended platforms include sparc64, and added device drivers. OpenSSH 5.2 is included, plus a number of tweaks, bugfixes, and enhancements. See the announcement page for a full list. OpenBSD is a security-oriented UNIX/BSD operating system." As per OpenBSD tradition, of course there's a song.

4 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not like that... by colonelxc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's a spectrum, and not all OSes are good for all applications. I for one am glad that there are people taking security seriously in an OS. Maybe it's hard to use for the average user, but in server and embedded environments, it excels.

    You can also bet that other *nixes (especially other BSD flavors) take hints on how to secure themselves from OpenBSD.

    Use whatever OS suits your needs best, just don't try to bring other distros down for not following your vision.

  2. Re:Not like that... by fadir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think that there are many people out there that would claim that OpenBSD is comfortable to use and would make a good desktop system.

    But it has its small niche market and lives there happily. Additionally we all benefit from this project one way or the other (OpenSSH, etc.)
    It's a bit similar to Minix: interesting and certainly helpful in its own way. But nothing for everyday usage.

  3. Re:application security? = fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, they do provide a patch branch of the core release for 1 year post release, they just don't provide any application updates during that time. What they advise against is running a stable branch for the core OS, and running a current ports (don't cross the streams - that would be bad?).

  4. Where OpenBSD falls down... by metrix007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is the lack of RBAC and MAC, or any decent non discretionary access controls.

    Solaris has RBAC, Linux has RSBAC and SELinux. OpenBSD staunchly refuses to add anything similar, and no, a system call interceptor does not count.

    It's all well and good to have quality code and aim to get rid of vulnerabilities at the core, but a really secure system would be able to protect from attack, in the event it did happen.

    As it stands, a system with SELinux or RSBAC is far, far more secure than OpenBSD, because of this fact.

    --
    If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.