The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

bsd security

Hi all,

was just wondering past slashdot and this little gem caught my eye:

"We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 3.5. We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of eight years with only a single remote hole in the default install."

one remote hole in 8 years.

bloody amazing if you ask me :)

FullNameRequired
Saturday, May 1, 2004

Astroturf

Li-fan Chen
Saturday, May 1, 2004

Hey my ZX Spectrum has had no security exploits in 20 years.

Matthew Lock
Saturday, May 1, 2004

Astroturf? As in, FNR is getting paid to act as a regular joe who is impressed with OpenBSD? Id think, hes just a regular joe who is impressed with OpenBSD.

I am too, though Ive never tried it. They are behind the curve performancewise, and the other BSDs are prtty secure too so Ive never felt the need to use it.

Eric Debois
Saturday, May 1, 2004

"Astroturf" ? assuming it means what Eric ascribed to it Id love to know the origin of that usage?

Ive not used it either...I dont even have a particularly strong desire to do so...osx works fine for me...

I just thought it was kind of an impressive record.

<g> although now its mentioned, my old sinclair ql has never been remotely exploited either..

FullNameRequired
Saturday, May 1, 2004

see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturf and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Eric Debois
Saturday, May 1, 2004

interesting.

so the idea is that by posting once to JOS about the impressive security record of openbsd Im hoping to start a surge of users, a grassroots push of computer users screaming "use openbsd.....its secuuureeeee" as their warcry...overcoming the reluctance of our managers towards the change we will hurtle from business to business forcibly replacing their operating systems, deleting their non-secure linux installations and replacing them with that ultimate OS, openbsd.
finally, in a grim-eyed orgy of destruction my army of maddened JOS users will burn their windows and mac instruction manuals and retire to their parents basement, giggling in quiet ectasy.

actually sounds kind of fun.

anyone got an openbsd installation cd?

FullNameRequired
Saturday, May 1, 2004

wow, thats stupid li-fan. who on earth would pay me to persuade you to use a free OS? what would the motive be?

its opensource you moronic little termite, no one cares whether you use the sodding thing or not...not the author(s) and certainly not me (Im a mac/osx user by choice and a windows/mac developer by habit).

heh...nice justice though, Ive been known to throw guerilla marketing accusations around myself.

FullNameRequired
Saturday, May 1, 2004

Nice to see that JOS users have almost reached the SlashDot level of cynicism, arrogance and stupidity.

Li-fan Chen, it's pretty clear to the rational readers that the OP simply was impressed with this and wanted to say as much.

That's what this board is here for, you tard.

Oh?
Saturday, May 1, 2004

Unfortunately, Eric Debois, without a full name we'll never know what's grassroot and what's astroturfing...

Li-fan Chen
Saturday, May 1, 2004

In other words astroturf = Howard Dean

I got it.
Sunday, May 2, 2004

OpenBSD has a record in this area. The developers recognise one thing, which some people don't. There is *NO* one solution. They actively audit code, have stack protection and now w^x on some types of machines.

This is great, really, but it doesn't come free, so to speak. java is a pain on it (1.3 works ok iirc), it doesn't ship with some features. For example your php/mysql app may break pretty soon on a default openbsd machine because apache is chroot'd, also it's a heavily modified version.

Of course you are free to undo all of this work, and install your own apache etc...but then you do lose some of the security.

fw
Sunday, May 2, 2004

I switched to OpenBSD a while back due to frequent roots while running hardened linux. I have never looked back.

www.highcountryrugby.com

Bob Stout
Sunday, May 2, 2004