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NSA also forked their own version of Linux, SELinux [0]. And were gracious enough to include it in most distros. And while it was extremely audited, at the time

by yardie 6y ago

NSA also forked their own version of Linux, SELinux [0]. And were gracious enough to include it in most distros. And while it was extremely audited, at the time, because of the reputation of the maintainer it never quite sat right with me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux

uncledave 6y ago
Rather than a coding bug I think the major risk of SELinux is a higher complexity I.e. its so absolutely horrible to work with that it’s easy to fuck it up and leave a hole in something.
kube-system 6y ago
Do you feel the same way about AES? It is also in the interest of the government to keep their own computers secure.
- yardie 6y ago
  Yes, I do. I feel secure in using AES and still remain skeptical of its creator. The NSA does good things and a whole lot of bad things simultaneously.
fl0wenol 6y ago
That wasn't a fork, it was a research project, and the resulting patches were integrated into mainline linux back in 2.6 It was run by the University of Utah and the NSA but eventually involving several contractors to implement the FLASK architecture as prototyped in the Fluke research OS as patches against Linux. Met and worked with some people who handled the user-space tools and patches, interesting stuff. The goal was to enhance Linux beyond discretionary access control (DAC) to mandatory access control (MAC) which would put Linux a step above WinNT and in the same boat as Trusted Solaris, so you could properly implement a Bell–LaPadula security model (write up, no write down) They succeeded and so now you have stuff like General Dynamic's PitBull cross domain solution which builds on and extends it. That was really what NSA wanted out of it in the end, since they have the responsibility to provide and approve such systems, which are very in demand in DoD and govt. AppArmor uses the same framework in the kernel that SELinux uses, but the policy implementation is different. The competing needs of AppArmor, LIDS, and SELinux are what prompted LSM to be created in the first place. But that research also has applicability in the space of trust segmentation, providing similar capabilities to containers and sandboxes but before they popularly existed. SELinux still performs this policy enforcement function for many distros' container security implementations, in addition to seccomp.

by yardie 6y ago

uncledave 6y ago

Rather than a coding bug I think the major risk of SELinux is a higher complexity I.e. its so absolutely horrible to work with that it’s easy to fuck it up and leave a hole in something.

kube-system 6y ago

Do you feel the same way about AES? It is also in the interest of the government to keep their own computers secure.

yardie 6y ago
Yes, I do. I feel secure in using AES and still remain skeptical of its creator. The NSA does good things and a whole lot of bad things simultaneously.

fl0wenol 6y ago

That wasn't a fork, it was a research project, and the resulting patches were integrated into mainline linux back in 2.6 It was run by the University of Utah and the NSA but eventually involving several contractors to implement the FLASK architecture as prototyped in the Fluke research OS as patches against Linux. Met and worked with some people who handled the user-space tools and patches, interesting stuff. The goal was to enhance Linux beyond discretionary access control (DAC) to mandatory access control (MAC) which would put Linux a step above WinNT and in the same boat as Trusted Solaris, so you could properly implement a Bell–LaPadula security model (write up, no write down) They succeeded and so now you have stuff like General Dynamic's PitBull cross domain solution which builds on and extends it. That was really what NSA wanted out of it in the end, since they have the responsibility to provide and approve such systems, which are very in demand in DoD and govt. AppArmor uses the same framework in the kernel that SELinux uses, but the policy implementation is different. The competing needs of AppArmor, LIDS, and SELinux are what prompted LSM to be created in the first place. But that research also has applicability in the space of trust segmentation, providing similar capabilities to containers and sandboxes but before they popularly existed. SELinux still performs this policy enforcement function for many distros' container security implementations, in addition to seccomp.