undefined | Better HN

0 pointstete6d ago0 comments

Sorry but that's simply not true. There are various cases where vulnerabilities didn't affect OpenBSD due to defense in-depth in OpenBSD.

OpenBSD has a pretty long history of eg. limiting attacks through compile time mitigations while making them more usable for every day use compared to specialized "high security" Linux distributions. This can also be seen in patches of third party software (in the ports (packages) system) that often have patches so the code can live with these limitations.

One example of such a mitigation is W^X. Implemented in OpenBSD in 2003, copied later by Windows, Linux and the other BSDs (incl. macOS).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX

More recently of course pledge and unveil were also added.

Also in 2003 OpenBSD was also the first mainstream (no research or test OS) that implemented strong ASLR that in 2005 was supported in Linux through third party patch sets.

For a list, see here:

https://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html

Many things were later picked up by Linux distributions, kernel patchsets, compilers, etc.

0 comments

JCattheATM6d ago

It really is true. OpenBSD focuses on auditing. In many cases they were not affected because of mitigations, but because they were just using a different stack. OpenBSD wasn't affected by regreSSHion for example, for basically the same reason Alpine wasn't.

OpenBSD didn't invent the concept behind W^X, and if you want to talk of 'copying', which I think is kind of silly personally, then PAX was first.

I'm familiar with the list of OpenBSD innovations, and in turn I would point you to https://https://isopenbsdsecu.re/ for a breakdown of their claims and marketing.

To this date OpenBSD doesn't have anything as simple as a proper ACL, let alone any type of MAC. They claim such systems are too complex, which is of course nonsense.

It's like I said - they focus a lot on preventing an attacker gaining access, but have little available to constrain attackers who DO get access.

binkHN6d ago

> OpenBSD focuses on auditing.

This is partially true; there are numerous other things that are done for mitigation outside of this.

JCattheATM6d ago

> there are numerous other things that are done for mitigation outside of this.

Sure, and I think they are mostly great, main problem being they just don't go far enough. Where's the namespace level isolation, ACL or MAC support? Is there a way to give a user append only ability for one file, while having write but not delete access to another, and delete to yet another? What's the maximum extent to which OpenBSD could have limited an attacker, had they been vulnerable to regreSSHion?

anthk6d ago

Namespaces are a joke under Linux compared ot 9front. The last exploits under bubblewrap ran the same. OpenBSD has OpenSSH pledge'd and unveil'ed.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

JCattheATM6d ago

OpenBSD didn't invent the concept behind W^X, and if you want to talk of 'copying', which I think is kind of silly personally, then PAX was first.

I'm familiar with the list of OpenBSD innovations, and in turn I would point you to https://https://isopenbsdsecu.re/ for a breakdown of their claims and marketing.

To this date OpenBSD doesn't have anything as simple as a proper ACL, let alone any type of MAC. They claim such systems are too complex, which is of course nonsense.

It's like I said - they focus a lot on preventing an attacker gaining access, but have little available to constrain attackers who DO get access.

binkHN6d ago

> OpenBSD focuses on auditing.

This is partially true; there are numerous other things that are done for mitigation outside of this.

JCattheATM6d ago

> there are numerous other things that are done for mitigation outside of this.

anthk6d ago

Namespaces are a joke under Linux compared ot 9front. The last exploits under bubblewrap ran the same. OpenBSD has OpenSSH pledge'd and unveil'ed.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse