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Linus's Thoughts on Linux Security (washingtonpost.com)
Rick Zeman writes: The Washington Post has a lengthy article on Linus Torvalds and his thoughts on Linux security. Quoting: "...while Linux is fast, flexible and free, a growing chorus of critics warn that it has security weaknesses that could be fixed but haven't been. Worse, as Internet security has surged as a subject of international concern, Torvalds has engaged in an occasionally profane standoff with experts on the subject. ...
His broader message was this: Security of any system can never be perfect. So it always must be weighed against other priorities — such as speed, flexibility and ease of use — in a series of inherently nuanced trade-offs. This is a process, Torvalds suggested, poorly understood by his critics. 'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"
Of course, contradictory points of view are presented, too: "While I don't think that the Linux kernel has a terrible track record, it's certainly much worse than a lot of people would like it to be," said Matthew Garrett, principal security engineer for CoreOS, a San Francisco company that produces an operating system based on Linux. At a time when research into protecting software has grown increasingly sophisticated, Garrett said, "very little of that research has been incorporated into Linux."
His broader message was this: Security of any system can never be perfect. So it always must be weighed against other priorities — such as speed, flexibility and ease of use — in a series of inherently nuanced trade-offs. This is a process, Torvalds suggested, poorly understood by his critics. 'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"
Of course, contradictory points of view are presented, too: "While I don't think that the Linux kernel has a terrible track record, it's certainly much worse than a lot of people would like it to be," said Matthew Garrett, principal security engineer for CoreOS, a San Francisco company that produces an operating system based on Linux. At a time when research into protecting software has grown increasingly sophisticated, Garrett said, "very little of that research has been incorporated into Linux."
'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"
This nails it entirely on the head, and is why a lot of security and privacy nutters gain so little traction when dealing with the masses. Security and privacy are important, but they need to be balanced pragmatically with what people actually want to do with the system.
Coming this Christmas!
Linus Torvalds: ...Security of any system can never be perfect. So it always must be weighed against other priorities — such as speed, flexibility and ease of use — in a series of inherently nuanced trade-offs....
Fortunately, there are open source operating systems available where security is less of a trade-off and more of a priority, such as OpenBSD, where the developers maintain a laser focus on security.
Security in Linux has been looked at as something you bolt-on after the fact. It was not designed from the ground-up with security in mind. Look at OpenBSD as an example: rock solid security and when a rare remote exploit is found, it's usually news on sites like
Trolling is a art,
Linux the OS certainly has had numerous real-world security problems that need to be addressed. I don't particularly care about the semantics of "Oh it's just a kernel!" because I could play the exact same game with Windows where Windows kernel vulnerabilities aren't super common either. Guess what: Linux and Windows both run the same web browsers these days, and that's a cross-platform security hole no matter who wrote the kernel.
Additionally, the biggest security hole I see now is Android due to the fact that it's damn near impossible to actually get upgraded software to fix the numerous holes.
However, Torvalds' direct responsibility is the kernel, so in this particular context I'm not going to give him too much grief. The Linux kernel does actually include extremely sophisticated mandatory access control systems like AppArmor, SELinux, etc. However... and this goes to his point... these systems are used sparingly because they are REALLY complex and lead to all kinds of usability issues for unsophisticated users (And "unsophisticated" here could easily mean a skilled Unix sysadmin with years of experience. These MAC systems are *not* considered "normal" in UNIX).
So basically: Yeah, Linux is not perfect. Nothing out there is perfect. However, the kernel actually does have a bunch of sophisticated security facilities. Maybe more work should go into making these sophisticated security features more accessible and useful to regular people.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
We are talking about securing tools. But the point is that tools do things. We want tools to help us to accomplish the things that the tools do.
A perfectly safe hammer is entirely possible. Make it out of flame-resistant, soft, synthetic materials and fill it with something equally soft. Shape it more like a ball than like a stick, so no-one can accidentally stick it in their mouth and suffocate.
Of course, now you have something that can't be used to pound in nails—but it's entirely the safest hammer on the planet.
Will anyone buy it or use it? Of course not. And they'll still need something with which to pound in nails. That's Linus' point.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The same Matt Garrett that accepted a shit patch and got kicked out of Intel for it? The one that fart-farts to anyone who doesn't see his point of view? The one who deems the wholy commuinty toxic and problematic?
Garrett has no business beeing anywhere near the kernel or security issues
Holy hell is slashdot pushing the anti-meritocracy agenda here.
Do I keep shelling out money for an operating system that is the number one target of hackers, malware, spyware, which has already bit me in the ass by visiting a single (not porn) website, and frequently crashes? Or do I install a free, less known, not as noob friendly, more secure, almost zero crashes operating system? Nah... Microshaft can stuff it, Installed Linux since Ubuntu 10.04 and will never go back to the dark side. I do hate Unity though, gnome-flashback gives me that warm fuzzy feeling I'm used to.
He's making the security suck on purpose, and then telling you security doesn't matter anyways. I'm old enough to remember when Linux was actually kind of exciting and fairly good. Clearly, those days have passed.
The reason Linux is not more secure than it could be is singular: Linus' draconian "my way or the highway" development process. I have seen many security patches submitted to the kernel over the years, only to see them cast in the trash by Linus in one tirade or another over specialized pedantry. I've seen solid security patches rejected over wording in comments.
I'm honestly shocked that the kernel hasn't been forked.
Oh wait. It has.
It's not that black and white at all. The OSHA-like examples of stupidity in motion don't apply here. What is present is an enormous crime effort to make money from other's computing misery. Look at what's happened, in terms of breaches, thefts, extortion, and just plain misery.
The problem starts with every coder everywhere, every sysadmin, network engineer, and web designer. The culture of security starts at the top, and here, at the Top of Linux, Linus brushes it off. These aren't nutters or nutjobs, these are the wounded, the broke/bankrupt, and those rapidly looking at systems infrastructure as if it's a joke.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
TFS makes the article look rather balanced, but if you actually read it, it's pretty clearly FUD attempting to make the kernel team look indifferent (or even incompetent) regarding security. It blames the "towelroot" Android exploit as being the fault of Linux, and compares Linux security to car manufacturers in the 1960s willfully avoiding seat belts and other safety mechanisms. Was the author bribed by Microsoft?
I have to say that if this is his position:
He's absolutely dead right and more people in the security profession need to understand what their job is really about. Security is a support role. Our job is to make someone else's stuff work better. Even if you're secret service protecting the president, the core value in your job isn't security for it's own sake, it's making sure the guy in the suit is able to do his job tomorrow.
but what you dont relizee is while you are using the hammer a huge KING COBRA is going to bite you and kill you! but just when it is about to strike, a hawk soups in and eats the COBRA! Then lightning kills you because you swung the hammer two hi!
Just... no. Security is taken seriously throughout the industry, ESPECIALLY at the so-called "top" (which is just a figment of your imagination, really). The point is it's taken seriously by people who are using the technology for something else. In service of a greater system, and greater goals. This greater system and pursuit of greater goals is generally what introduces a lack of security, and it is unavoidable even if you never touch a computer.
I completely support both of your positions!
I've been involved in IT security in one guise or another since 2002. The single most important thing I have learned about IT security was learned attending a security conference where Bruce Schneider was one of the speakers. His one-sentence line has always stuck with me: "Security is a process, not a product." This one sentence changed the entire way I see security and, as a result, I am free to make better decisions about what I'm doing and why because I'm not focused on say, a firewall, or a router, but how everything in the LAN/WAN works together, balancing the needs of everyone from HR to the nerds in the darkened basement.
Pick two (not that you always have the choice anyway).
He's trying to say that if people want powerful, flexible networking, they'll choose an 80% safe OS that enables this easily over a 90% safe OS that imposes lots of overhead costs to make it possible; that people will choose a 60% secure OS that runs their processing jobs in 3 hours over an 85% secure OS that runs their processing jobs in 6 hours.
He's pointing out that people like security well enough, but they want to get stuff DONE even more, and that most people will take the calculated risk to be less secure if it makes them more productive at lower costs. That if there is a less secure but more productive option, up to some arbitrary point (that is different in each case, but that can be inferred by the movement of markets and communities as a whole), they'll choose the more productive option.
And that there is no point in saying "then all of us that produce these things must get together and make highly secure, if less capable stuff, so that all choices are equally highly secure!" because as soon as that happens, a garage coder somewhere is going to have a project on github that says "I got tired of waiting for jobs to finish, so I wrote my own from scratch. It's totally insecure, but damned if it doesn't finish the job in half the time!" and that people will immediately flock to it.
In other words, his goals for Linux aren't for Linux to be the most secure OS on the planet, but to be one of the most useful and used ones.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Were this true, a culture of security would have indeed stanched many of the problems found. Certainly the Linux kernels have been well-thought through. They are not immune.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Just turn off your computer....very secure!
Matthew Garrett again trying to remove Linus from the equation. First they tried with the rants angle, now with the "security" aspect. pure FUD
based on a multiplicity of factors, notably including their ability to support the company's operational needs, NOT ONLY how "secure" the systems are.
QED.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So merge the grsecurity patches into the mainline kernel, that's the "Linux" part of Linux/SystemD sorted. Then get rid of the SystemD part. Job done.
Your analogy doesn't seem accurate. It's more like if you had a hammer - all hammerlike and useful, but because of the laziness of the hammer creator, can be remotely made to fly around your workshop smashing into things by anyone wishing to make it do so.
The security holes which do not affect functionality should be fixed, and commonly are not. That is the problem.
Linux, and Linus, have been on the front page of The Washington Post.
Best Slashdot Co
The Security Professional's job is security.
Yes but that doesn't mean their job gets priority over the actual business being conducted. Security is important and serious but it is not paramount.
Yes, the goals of the secpro often conflict with the goals of the desktop support technician, but in the end security is more important than usability.
Wrong. The only way to get perfect security is to make it effectively impossible to do anything useful. Security is very rarely more important than utility even for organizations like the military whose job is security. That doesn't mean security is unimportant or that some utility cannot be traded for security but a company that is perfectly secure will be out of business faster than you can say "Chapter 11".
Your job is really about securing access to data, and nothing else.
Wrong. A security pro's job is to be an advocate for security and help the organization balance security needs against functional needs. Their jobs is to help avoid the landmines and mitigate risk. Someone who doesn't realize this will be useless in their security job. A security pro who actually thinks security trumps all would be like a guard who thinks everyone should be strip searched upon entering a building. It's just not realistic, practical nor will it be acceptable.
I find it highly amusing that people who worry about security tend to be those who want to shoehorn shit like kdbus into the kernel.
The most secure system is the one with zero installations. At some point though, you need to realise that a system must also be usable, and so you trade some security in order to gain users.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
You are exactly right.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory safety and security are much more important than anything else. So that's how we spend most of our time.
If the highest priority is to do nothing wrong, the best strategy is to do nothing.
To further your point, unplug your computer from power and it's 100% safe from remote attacks.
While bsd.mp arrived just in the nick of time as multi-core came on the scene, the architecture strongly resembles Linux 2.2 with one large kernel lock, forcing kernel code to run on only one CPU core at a time.
Linux moved to much finer-grained locks, that allow non-conflicting segments of kernel code to run on several processors at once. While most commercial UNIX has done the same, there is no question that one great big kernel lock is more secure.
OpenBSD is very slowly allowing safe calls out of the kernel lock, and they do value security over performance, so hopefully their userspace will remain very safe.
For those who want to harden Linux, perhaps the 2.2 branch should be revived.
goals, this is close to what happens. Where truly "hard" computing is necessary, resources are disconnected from networks, etc. People know which side their bread is buttered on, they're not fools. Sure, security is an important "nice to have" but it's not bigger than the task at hand in most cases.
Witness how the public continues to use cloud services, social media services, online commerce, and mag-stripe credit cards, despite regular breaches. They'll bitch and moan, but they're not going to stop doing their stuff.
Similarly, notice how Linux effectively rules the world as THE key component of network and mobile space infrastructure, even dominating big chunks of consumer space (i.e. Android). And meanwhile, OpenBSD is an asterisk.
People want security, sure, but they're not going to choose to martyr themselves (or their projects or tasks) to it. Linus is a pretty smart guy at the end of the day.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
What Slashdot readers hear: "Linux is not BSD."
What normal people hear: "Linux is a terribly insecure OS from some total asshole, who by the way doesn't give a shit."
Mainstream Media's message: "Better stick with Microsoft Windows; it's the only thing that's secure."
The job of security is to fully understand the risk, penalty, and consequence of system compromises, and then to suggest the proper tools to manage this risk.
Some people work with data that involves enormous consequences should it be compromised. These people are likely not on Linux if they understand the issues properly.
Linus and the kernel team likely knows what security RISK could exist and have made decisions from it. That's considering they take their time in release fixes vs the agile way of releasing new stuff every 3 months.
Yes, Linus is right that nothing is perfect in the world of security, but Linus needs to realize a number of design decisions could be viewed as bad after the fact....since a bad decision is unavoidable.
I trained network guys on installing our company's firewall (hardened Linux OS) for 18 years. I started every class by asking this question: "Is the purpose of the network security?" A few guys would nod, after all I'm the security guy, that must be the answer I wanted, right? NO! The purpose of the network is *getting work done*. Security is a feature, and it must be balanced against other features with one goal in mind: getting the work done at a level of productivity acceptable to management. Perfect security is an illusion. Doesn't exist, won't ever exist. You do the best you can in the environment you work in, and that's all you can do.
I agree that operating system engineers should not get bogged down in details of security. What they should do, however, is concentrate on those aspects of security which equate to quality, especially stability and transparency. Not crashing in response to unusual input and handling overloads gracefully are really important aspects of security. Likewise, the ability to see what is going on in your OS is fundamental to security. For example, I have argued for some time that the addition of DTrace to Mac OS X is an important security feature. The reaction I get is "That's just a debugger." No, the ability to understand what's going on is absolutely necessary to security. These things do not degrade the user experience or make an OS less usable. They make it better.
The trouble is that most people don't care about security until their bank account gets drained, or in another context until a bomb goes off in the airplane hold below them. So some degree of security BOFHery is unfortunately required.
People take calculated risks all the time in their lives, and different people will make different tradeoffs. Some are what the general population perceives as reckless, others are seen as overly cautious. There are contradictory aphorisms: "Look before you leap" and "He who hesitates is lost".
Once you've been burned, you tend to be more careful. Look at the increase in airport security recently as an example, or programs to protect against storm damage on the east coast. That stuff is expensive, and you have to feel like it's worth the expense. Same with computers. Is it worth it to go through an elaborate verification process to get into your online bank account? Wouldn't it be safer not to have anything financial done online? If you go online to do something you feel might be risky, try booting from a dvd with no writable storage except a ramdisk which will disappear as soon as you shut down to reconnect your regular hard drive. It's a PITA, but maybe it's worth it. (If you boot from an SSD it's usually a lot faster, and I doubt anybody can suborn an SSD in that situation yet.)
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
'Only a total fucking retard thinks Linux can be 100% secure! Better security? Then stop writing such shit code you fuckstick!'
There are different ways to implement security, and I think this discussion of Torvalds' and ours is a sign that security ingrained within large monolithic kernels is a demoted (if not dead) model.
Hypervisors like Xen are at the forefront of security. They embody a sandboxing-done-right philosophy where the baremetal system runs only a small, dedicated hypervisor and all of the rich functionality is contained within VMs. In a system like Qubes, which adds an integration layer on top of Xen that is very small and tight and seals-off known avenues for VM breakouts, you get (mostly) the best of both worlds. Even hardware devices are virtualized in Qubes, and it works.
In this model, the hypervisor acts as a microkernel and the Linux/Windows kernels act as drivers and services. IMO, this is 'microkernels done right'.
Of course, any security model worth its salt won't engender a black-and-white view as Linus complains. One accepts that individual VMs that are exposed to risk (browsing remote web pages, for instance) may be compromised. But a compromised browser shouldn't mean a high risk of privilege escalation (the monolithic kernel disease) and having sensitive data stolen, or the system itself turned into a surveillance or attack platform -- any successful attack on an application should be contained by default.
Slashdot tools have raged against Microsoft security for years, based on flaws in third party applications.
Furthermore, you don't get to claim Android is Linux when trying to pretend your marketshare is at all significant, then claim it isn't when discussing Android's fucktarded lack of security.
Sorry but no, his analogy was/is better than yours (just reading in to what the article suggests). That is to say that if there are flaws in the coding of Linux (manufacturing of /the hammer) that allow it to be exploited than Linus says those are important to address just like other flaws that allow Linux (the hammer) to break. As an example, rather than remotely flying the hammer around (not sure how you went there as there is no conceivable design of a hammer that would allow it to 'fly around' but...) lets say the tensile strength of the head doesn't meet the manufacturing guidelines & it can thus shatter...that should result in a 'bug fix' (recall etc.) to fix the hammer. That's not a particular 'security flaw' but it is a flaw that affects its functionality and needs to be addressed. Similarly a bug in Linux that causes it crash OR if it allows remote command & control are equally 'bad things' (Linus TM) & both must be fixed.
To make the analogy complete, in reference to the hammer, what Linus is saying is that if you redesign the head so that it's made out of soft flexible rubber/plastic in order to avoid it 'shattering' than you have entirely missed the point of the hammer to begin with. Yes it's 'safer' but it is entirely less useful as a hammer. To that extent rather than redesign the hammer the point would be to make better processes to catch flaws in manufacturing the hammer to avoid/remove the possibility of it shattering (say for instance by manufacturing the head to specifications well above it's potential 'impact force' where it may shatter).
In any case 'flying hammers' have nothing to do with this.
He's pointing out that people like security well enough, but they want to get stuff DONE even more, and that most people will take the calculated risk to be less secure if it makes them more productive at lower costs.
Also, too much security can backfire. I call this the Garbage Compacter Rule: In Star Wars it was too difficult to shut down all the garbage compacters on the detention level, so R2-D2 just shut them all down. Similarly, when you run up against a security system that's stopping you doing what you want, but it's hard to poke a hole in it, you sometimes just "shut them all down" to get some work done. You're left with less security than if the original block wasn't there.
Where else can you lay the blame?
shell@t0ltevzw:/data/local/tmp $ ./ghettoroot /system/bin/mksh
native ghettoroot, aka cube-towel, aka towelroot
running with pid 14678
Kernel version: Linux version 3.0.31-1496113 (dpi@SWDD5710) (gcc version 4.4.3 (GCC) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu May 8 01:19:38 KST 2014
Found matching device: Linux version 3.0.31-
modstring: 1337 0 1 0 4 0
[DEBUG] init_exploit:1153: function start
...
DEBUG] read_pipe:316: function exit
[DEBUG] get_root:535: YOU ARE A SCARY DEVICE
[DEBUG] write_pipe:325: dest:cc2734c0 src:40be55d0 count:24
[DEBUG] write_pipe:325: dest:e581a280 src:40be55e8 count:92
[DEBUG] write_pipe:325: dest:c586c624 src:00013010 count:4
[DEBUG] postroot:394: Going to execute custom command.
[INFO] run_custom_command:382: Going to execute: /system/bin/mksh
shell@t0ltevzw:/data/local/tmp # id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=1003(graphics),1004(input),1007(log),1011(adb),1015(sdcard_rw),1028(sdcard_r),3001(net_bt_admin),3002(net_bt),3003(inet),3006(net_bw_stats) context=u:r:kernel:s0
Using a hammer is an extremely poor and simplistic analogy. A hammer is a piece of wood and a shaped piece of metal which are kept together in some fairly simple manner.
The Linux kernel and most systems are anything but simple and can break or be broken in ways that will be impossible to see through a simple inspection. You can easily inspect a hammer to see that it is safe and in working order.
Security is about being able to assess risk and then either fix the issue or accept the risk and compensate for it. If it is fairly straightforward for the risks with the Linux kernel to be assessed and somehow compensated for, then Linus may have a point.
If, however, there is no way of adequately assessing the real risk of using the kernel, then Linux has a problem that will eventually need to be resolved and one day a catastrophe could happen that causes a sudden departure from the Linux kernel or a serious retrenchment.
Security is problematic because no one takes it seriously until there is a disaster. And when the panic starts, it is far, far too late.
Unless it is a laptop with wake on LAN enabled. Always correct every time some of the time.
> ESPECIALLY at the so-called "top" (which is just a figment of your imagination, really)
Really it's not. See how compelling that sounds? Linus being a particularly good example of top-down security design (since his branches are the only ones that end up being used). Microsoft is another. Amazon is another. BSD, not so much. Even with cross-pollination, technology flows from clearly delineated tiers.
We get new sources, rarely, but the top-down nature of technology propogation doesn't change. There's a corollary in there about modern capitalism and those with money are those who get a message out best.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
The basic function of any journalist is to get the facts straight: For Linux, the operating system that Torvalds created and named after himself ...
Which, as any Linux user should know, he did not do. It was named for him. A google for 'how linux got its name' clearly shows 'Ari Lemmke' chose the name.
Sorry journalist from the non-technical side of the world trying to drum up clicks by misunderstanding ... well, probably everything related to the article.
Look...
You can have the stronguest safe in the world, if you leave it unmonitored, it will be robbed.
No system is safe, there are hardware,kernel,aplication,logicand human bugs. And after some time all those parts can fail.
And all those parts need monitoring. If you want a system to be secure(as in the most secure possible) you need to have somebone look at the logs, to see if ppl are attenting to breach the system.
Also, most of those security experts let their boss use their birthday as password.
Maybe 1 in 1000000 linux setups have their infrasructure with a higher level of security compared to the kernel.
The rest use 3rd party closed programs, unsafe password, exposed legacy apps, bad logic, underpayed angry workers, back dors.
And lets face it, most of IT can withstand a 1 day downtime that recovering a backup takes. The rest(banks, ISPs) can pay, and should pay, for active monitoring.
I've said a few things on the problem, I'll paraphrase.
Security is a process, not an application. The largest vector for exploits is in the chair and not in the code. Security is about knowing the risks and deciding how much risk one is willing to accept in order to accomplish their goal - there's inherent flaws in most everything and a degree of risk that is acceptable. It's a very personal, or individual, choice or a matter of policy for businesses. We can argue where those lines are best drawn but nothing, ever, is completely secure - not even an air gap is enough, if one is truly paranoid.
Finally, why is the opinion of Garrett important? Didn't he fork the kernel so that he could get away from Linus/Linux? I seem to recall that he meandered off to start Safe Space Linux, or Linux for Insecure People. I should probably check the Git to see how that's coming along...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I wouldn't say 100%. Maybe 99.999% as I'm sure someone, possibly me, could wirelessly power it up and interface to it even if it wasn't designed to do that. Could. After doing it I'd lose interest and go ahead and make some other pointless gadget.
There's no way to specify "run this task with this type of access only to this set of stuff" in Linux... which means you're giving your authority to everything you execute. Until this gets fixed... any flaw in any of the code you run can be used against you.
If you could specify authority and filter it, in a similar manner to unix pipes, you'd be able to build a database that can only take local connections, then build a read-only connection to it, then build a web page that could only connect to that and respond to requests... and finally the web server to take requests from the web and query the page.... and an outside hacker would have to pick through each layer on his way to the database... even if the code was only 99% effective, that's a 99.9999% effective block with very minimal effort.
This type of stuff doesn't have to be user-unfriendly, in fact if implemented correctly it would be fairly transparent to them.
I for one welcome our unsecured overlords.
See http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html
The programmer threw a bunch of underdocumented, experimental, non-portable gcc-compiler "features" at a basic security sensitive function, and *still does not understand* why the polymorphing "security" bloatware was rejected, with extreme prejudice.
Seriously, that testosterone dripping asshole thinks he's GOD but if he knew security half as good as he fucking thinks he does I wouldn't have to sudo yum so often. It's fucking easy to dump on everyone else but I'm not hearing him scream sophomoric obscenities at himself for the shit security. For fuck's sake, he named it after himself, I'm surprised he hasn't engaged in Seppuku yet.
GRsec went closed-source with it's stable patches. It's not a contender anymore.
GRsec went closed-source with it's stable patches..
Yep, forked by GRsec, which now went closed-source with it's stable patches..
GPL has no teeth.
Could installing and configuring grsecurity/PAX/etc on that server achieve what you want? Or does this all have to be done within or at the kernel?
Seriously, I had to double check that this wasn't from Forbes.
Hahahaha dave420 enjoys the fine flavor of eating his words http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
It's not that black and white at all. The OSHA-like examples of stupidity in motion don't apply here. What is present is an enormous crime effort to make money from other's computing misery. Look at what's happened, in terms of breaches, thefts, extortion, and just plain misery.
The problem starts with every coder everywhere, every sysadmin, network engineer, and web designer. The culture of security starts at the top, and here, at the Top of Linux, Linus brushes it off. These aren't nutters or nutjobs, these are the wounded, the broke/bankrupt, and those rapidly looking at systems infrastructure as if it's a joke.
Right, because the CryptoLocker shit is infecting Linux computers, and not Windows. Get a fucking clue, you moron. Linus can't fix Microsoft's decades of fucked up design.
One has to wonder why all these security experts angry about Linux's "lacking" security are just gobbing off instead of forking the apparently highly insecure kernel and releasing their own ultra-secure version of it. Words are cheap and spouting idle buzzwords to get idiots riled up is easy, what's not so cheap or easy is to actually produce some actual work. Hell, if these lot produce a kernel that is inherently more secure than the Linux kernel while still staying usable, I'm certain the modifications will be merged with the main Linux kernel. So when can we expect this new ultra-secure kernel?
Dave420 is always getting bitch slapped by apk. It's become a slashdot tradition.
Not sure I understand the assertion that MAC is used sparingly ... e.g. Ubuntu has AppArmor on by default, with many profiles in enforcing mode out of the box (Ubuntu security docs), Fedora Core has SELinux on by default, with protection for many apps in place (Fedora Core SELinux info).
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Analogy with hammer is misleading. Nobody is remotely hacking your hammer and stealing your bank logins. I agree that security is a trade-off when it is about any device not connected to the Internet. As soon as you connect to the Internet, everything changes. Now security is an absolute requirement. Without security, nothing else you do matters. I don't care how great your hammer is at nailing in anything that needs nailing, as long as buying it means that I make my personal data vulnerable to attacks.
"Look at what's happened, in terms of breaches, thefts, extortion, and just plain misery." And how much of that was due to Linux kernel flaws? Or how much of that could be avoided by changing the Linux kernel without sacrificing all the other requirements?
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(...). It's more like if you had a hammer - all hammerlike and useful, but because of the laziness of the hammer creator, can be remotely made to fly around your workshop smashing into things by anyone wishing to make it do so.
You can't do physically impossible things. So, I agree with Linus. There's so much security you can do without degrading your performance [yeah, I'm a performance guy, who calculates risks].
Interesting, is there an example of where this kind of setup has been implemented? It sounds sort of like the Android permissions model where they get applied to a specific application.
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Linus is detached from reality. The same philosophy was what existed before 9-11 happened. When a significant 0 day is found in the kernel that ends up being exploited globally then he will care.
I think a lot of folks are missing the point that security is only exploitable through weaknesses in software. For the kernel that means that someone didn't anticipate how someone could abuse the code to subvert the security of the system. It seems to me that the same philosophy around security existed right before 9-11. All it takes is one zero day exploit to render who knows how many Linux hosts impotent just because Linus doesn't want the overhead to ensure that the kernel has the proper security measures applied.
So we shouldn't complain about splinters on the hammer handle, or that the head is so loose that it will fly off if you use some effort? Or that the hammer is within reach of a homicidal maniac instead of being locked up?