3 ms·
You can have secure monolith and insecure microkernel. It’s not a silver bullet, and security nowadays is really complicated.
by justapassenger 3y ago
You can have secure monolith and insecure microkernel. It’s not a silver bullet, and security nowadays is really complicated.
- LargeTomato 3y agoThere are some technologies that are so good they can fix everything, almost as if by magic. Functional programming, micro kernels, RISC (or, depending on the decade, CISC), cryptocurrency, etc.
- abrookewood 3y agocryptocurrency has fixed nothing.
- prmoustache 3y agoYour sarcasm detector is broken.
- saithound 3y ago> You can have secure monolith and insecure microkernel. Superficially, that claim sounds reasonable, but I'd have a hard time substantiating it. There is exactly one secure microkernel ready for production use today, and zero secure monolithic kernels. There's not even a "here's how one could secure a monolithic kernel in principle" whitepaper.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> There is exactly one secure microkernel ready for production use today, and zero secure monolithic kernels. I'd be interested to hear your definition of "secure", and why OpenBSD doesn't qualify.
- astrange 3y agoOpenBSD mostly operates on a hobbyist's idea of security, where they just make up attacks to defend against rather than being systematic or actually keeping up with the outside world. (https://isopenbsdsecu.re https://isopenbsdsecu.re) Although professional security people are also rather bad at this and like to eg stack multiple cool-looking mitigations even if they break each other. (https://siguza.github.io/PAN/ https://siguza.github.io/PAN/)
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoOkay, so what threat model successfully attacks an OpenBSD box and fails on... I assume the one "secure" microkernel is seL4? Since OpenBSD only defends against made up attacks, this should of course be very easy to demonstrate.
- astrange 3y agoIt's not "an OpenBSD box" but "an OpenBSD box running a typical amount of third party services".