NSA Secure Linux

[jmbrinks]

I noticed the article on the homepage for Hardening Linux. Have any of you gone to the NSA wepage, downloaded and installed secure linux?

I downloaded it but I haven't got much further yet.

[trommaster]

Well, im not holding any documents of national importance on my box, so i don't think i'll bother :P

[paradox]

Well, im not holding any documents of national importance on my box, so i don't think i'll bother :P

Might need it so you don't get busted for that underground edited ring that you are singlehandedly running off of your boxen

Aragorn

[JimH]

Have any of you gone to the NSA wepage, downloaded and installed secure linux?

I downloaded it but I haven't got much further yet.

I haven't even downloaded it. I would like to look at it, but I'm still waiting for 48 hour days. ;D

Jim H

[paradox]

Might need it so you don't get busted for that underground edited ring that you are singlehandedly running off of your boxen

Aragorn

Umm you see that italic edited section, that was done by JimH. You know something is wrong when he is editing the owner of the sites messages....

Aragorn

[jmbrinks]

I found this especially interesting due to the articles a few years back about the backdoors in all of the MS operating systems for the Government, as well as Win XPs sending snapshots and licensing issues.

Now the NSA provides an open source "secure" linux OS based off of RedHat.

If I were a true codehead I would like to really get down and dirty and check it out to see if there are similar backdoors.

If not, it would be cool that the NSA provided a "secure" open source OS.

[nfallon]

There are back doors to everything. When I got my Novell certification years ago it was the most secure server on the market. It couldn't be beat. A month later someone found a back door. There will always be someone that will find a way in if they really want to.

Neil

[Aaron_Adams]

I've looked into it quite a bit, but haven't had a chance to try it.

When it was announced and the source was released, it was instantly devoured by all the coders in the community, no one could fine any backdoors or anything. There is always going to be something exploit eventually, ( or is there... qmail anyone? ) but there aren't actual backdoors coded in on purpose, like jmbrinks is refering to.

[JimH]

You won't see any back doors in Open source software. With the source code available for inspection by everyone, it would be impossible for one to exist for long without some one raising a red flag and "slashdotting" the "feature".

Jim H

[jmbrinks]

I agree that open source won't have backdoors because of the source review by the community. I just used the Windows example because of the issues it raised.

Have there been any reported holes in the NSA Linux development? Have they created an ultra-secure, ultra-stable OS? If so, Why wouldn't everyone want to use it?

Any horror stories out there?