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I don't think I can agree scientifically. OpenBSD developers do subjectively seem to think more holistically about security, and having less features lowers th

by kev009 7y ago

I don't think I can agree scientifically. OpenBSD developers do subjectively seem to think more holistically about security, and having less features lowers the total number but not the ratio and in practice it doesn't seem to have what I would consider a statistical magnitude difference in the type and ratio of incidents that plague C Unix-likes. In the article the author links to one of Ilja van Sprundel's excellent talks; the takeaway is basically that more eyes actually work for security and you could therefore infer Linux is a magnitude more secure than BSD. I've been quite negative in this thread because the overall debate on these topics is pretty frivolous. We already have the tools at our disposal to do magnitude greater secure software and splitting hairs over which BSD has better defaults is missing the forest for the trees.

ksec 7y ago
>incidents that plague C Unix-likes Do you have a specific language in mind that offers improvement? Or am I reading too much into the sentence? >We already have the tools at our disposal to do magnitude greater secure software Mind sharing more details on the tools? Specifically with respect to System / OS Level programming.
- tatersolid 7y ago
  >Do you have a specific language in mind that offers improvement? Any language with memory and type safety should comprise as much as possible of the whole system. See the Singularity OS from Microsoft Research, or whatever that Rust OS project is called. Almost all the major, nicknamed, headline-grabbing RCE bugs in the last two decades are memory or type safety issues in C or C++ code. Every C or C++ developer claims safe code is possible or even easy in their favorite language, but history has proven them very wrong.
- kev009 7y ago
  I'm not banking on any language shift at the moment but could see a plausible case in the past for Ada and maybe now Rust after some more years of maturity both down to the metal. But both of these suffer from some awkwardness around the toolchain for integration into a traditional BSD right now, at least Rust may overcome that in time. syskaller is in use by the major BSDs and stricter compilers and other static analysis tools have been a far bigger impact IMHO than the OpenBSD style mitigations. I would like to actually see some kind of case studies where OpenBSD mitigations have protected a user where they'd have been let down by say Linux or FreeBSD or OpenBSD without them. I think a less snake oil approach to security is done by the seL4 folks, the difference in approach makes the *nix security mitigation people somewhat cringe worthy.

by kev009 7y ago

ksec 7y ago

>incidents that plague C Unix-likes Do you have a specific language in mind that offers improvement? Or am I reading too much into the sentence? >We already have the tools at our disposal to do magnitude greater secure software Mind sharing more details on the tools? Specifically with respect to System / OS Level programming.

tatersolid 7y ago
>Do you have a specific language in mind that offers improvement? Any language with memory and type safety should comprise as much as possible of the whole system. See the Singularity OS from Microsoft Research, or whatever that Rust OS project is called. Almost all the major, nicknamed, headline-grabbing RCE bugs in the last two decades are memory or type safety issues in C or C++ code. Every C or C++ developer claims safe code is possible or even easy in their favorite language, but history has proven them very wrong.
kev009 7y ago
I'm not banking on any language shift at the moment but could see a plausible case in the past for Ada and maybe now Rust after some more years of maturity both down to the metal. But both of these suffer from some awkwardness around the toolchain for integration into a traditional BSD right now, at least Rust may overcome that in time. syskaller is in use by the major BSDs and stricter compilers and other static analysis tools have been a far bigger impact IMHO than the OpenBSD style mitigations. I would like to actually see some kind of case studies where OpenBSD mitigations have protected a user where they'd have been let down by say Linux or FreeBSD or OpenBSD without them. I think a less snake oil approach to security is done by the seL4 folks, the difference in approach makes the *nix security mitigation people somewhat cringe worthy.