Re: Article "Why OpenBSD Will Never Be as Secure as Linux" - final note

[Szilveszter Adam <sziszi_(_at_)_petra_(_dot_)_hos_(_dot_)_u-szeged_(_dot_)_hu>]

On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 11:49:02PM -0600, Wes Peters wrote:
> There is a pretty good discussion of this article happening at 
> http://daily.daemonnews.org/view_story.php3?story_id=1890, please
> feel free to join in.  The views and comments of the OpenBSD 
> community will be especially appreciated.  The author of the 
> article has been invited to join the discussion there as well.

OK thanks I will probably take a look.

Just a final note on this forum (at least from me)

It seems to me that most people have been put off by the sensationalistic
headline and never bothered to carefully read the article (or my mail for
that matter.) Wes has. Thanks!

I was not about Linux being more secure or not. This is not what the
article was about either, despite the confusing terminology. It was about
the lack of features that would make OpenBSD a trusted system. (which, as
Wes pointed out is not the same as a secure one) Of course now that I have
learned that this direction is not a high-priority one for the OpenBSD
project, this is an answer I can live with. It was just to do some
clarification.

I still hold however that some of the ideas would still be nice to have in
OpenBSD. For example even though I have been known to strongly recommend
that separation of important functions be done, even so it would be nice to
not have eg the DNS server running as root and this way even if your box
was hacked into, the damage would still be contained, and you could still
recover a whole lot easier. Just imagine, even the term "root-kit" would
loose much of its scary meaning then.

BTW I wrote to Kurt right away and he answered that he would be looking
into TrustedBSD as it becomes integrated into FreeBSD. But he also said
that the reason he chose OpenBSD as a topic for his article was because 
this OS was more
security-consicous than most. It is a compliment if you want it.

I really think that we will have no energy shortage anytime soon given the
amount of people on this list who are more than ready to flame at anything
that seems to be "against" their fav OS. But I think that some people still
need to understand that liking something does not equal bone-headedly
repeating the official propaganda line "x years without a ..." to anybody
who dares to ask a question or raise even a bit of criticism. Geez if I did
an OS that as a last step in the install process would turn off the machine
than I could claim that this will never be cracked using the default
install unless you change something like turning it back on.

Thanks!

-- 
Regards:

Szilveszter ADAM
Szeged University
Szeged Hungary