OpenBSD Now Nine Years Old 60
NekkidBob writes "OpenBSD, my personal favorite *BSD, turns 9 years old today. And with only 1 remote hole in the default install, I'd say that is a pretty good acheivement. The first commit was at 16:36 MST on Saturday, October 14, 1995. Happy birthday OpenBSD!"
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
A similar attempt has been ongoing with the HURD kernel for at least the last decade.
Packaging attempts were made with FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
I don't know the status of the Debian/FreeBSD port but the Debian/OpenBSD port was abandoned when Andreas Schuldei, the maintainer of the port, realised that the kernel had shitloads of race conditions and offered no real advantages on its own over properly configured Linux kernels (such as those from Debian itself).
He also believed that the Debian/Linux userspace was not any better or worse in any real sense over the OpenBSD userspace (the ports and packages systems on OpenBSD are not audited, for the most part).
Re:And with only 1 remote hole in the default inst (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And with only 1 remote hole in the default inst (Score:4, Insightful)
this doesn't mean your final system won't have holes, but it means you're not already starting "in the hole"; it doesn't sound like much, and yet how many other systems out there can make this claim? OpenBSD isn't the end-all, be-all, it's just a good tool for your toolbox
Re:And with only 1 remote hole in the default inst (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately, that's where you are wrong.
It's quite common to search through bugtraq or another security list, and find it in the list as the only OS "unaffected". Now, that's not always the case, but it's surprisingly common.
OpenBSD is more secure than other OSes, not just out of the box, but with major services enabled too... When you install Apache on Linux/FreeBSD, you just get the plain vanilla version. With OpenBSD, you get a version that has been audited by the team, and lots of changes have been made.
Plus, about a year ago, Propolice, W^X, and other protection measures have be included by OpenBSD, which does negate most bugs, and does protect your OTHER services against software bugs.
BTW, most of my machine have only SSHD enabled (which is one of a few services enabled by default), so the default install can be very useful for a great many things. SSH handles log-in, file transfer, plus port forwarding. So any other services can run on 127.0.0.1, and only be accesses remotely (via SSH) if you have an account.
Of course, but baring that, OpenBSD is a very good choice.
Re:And with only 1 remote hole in the default inst (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And with only 1 remote hole in the default inst (Score:5, Insightful)
No shit?!
The point with OpenBSD, is that it has so many active security mechanisms, that a [insert network daemon] exploit might allow a remote root on your FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux machines, but only result in a DoS of that particular service on OpenBSD.
Already we are not only seeing open source OS' take leafs out of OpenBSD's book, but also Microsoft and Sun.
The multitude of active and passive security measures in OpenBSD is very impressive.
Plus the point is, that an OS should be locked down from the initial install and then built on from there as the admin requires, not as the OS maintainers think you will require.
Presumptuous people who build operating systems, do not make secure operating systems.
Re:one hole? (Score:4, Insightful)
You speak with such authority, for someone who obviously knows nothing about the subject.
OpenSSH has been ON by default at some stage after or including OpenBSD 2.6 and only recently has the option to disable it within the install script, become an option for users. That's about 5.5 years out of that 8.
The foundation of your rant is completely non-existent.
Nowdays, even if you do enable popular daemons, your typical worst case is likely to be a DoS instead of a remote root, thanks to OpenBSD.
I take, "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!", as a fact that is representative of the mindset of the developers behind the project, not as an absolute gauge of overall project security. Anyone who does or thinks that is what it is supposed to represent, is stupid.
Take that statement for what it is. Reading more into it is your problem.
Re:And with only 1 remote hole in the default inst (Score:2, Insightful)
It depends what you're doing, doesn't it?
its the applications which by default have the applications, thus the exploits.
Not sure what you mean by "the applications which by default have the applications", but if you meant "the applications which by default have the holes" (or "wholes" as you call them), no they don't. Stop spewing nonsense and spend 5 minutes at openbsd.org and read about the auditing work that goes into many of the specific versions of the applications included in the OS - Apache on OBSD is NOT the same as Apache on RedHat by default, etc.
A uber secure box sitting there doing nothing, is still, doing nothing.
Okay, you've no idea what's included in the "default install" of OpenBSD, we believe you already, no more evidence required.