Re: Linux Distribution Recomendation

From: Peter Busser (peter_at_devbox.adamantix.org)
Date: 03/04/04

  • Next message: AJ Butcher, Information Systems and Computing: "RE: Recommending an IDS system" 
    Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 10:44:05 +0100
To: security-basics@securityfocus.com

    Hi!

    > 4.) By Sacrifice security for functionality I mean you can run something
    > like SElinux, Gentoo hardened or Adamantix which is harder to crack than
    > just about anything but you will pay a price, things like PaX stack
    > protection will give you a significant performance hit and break many
    > applications. It should be noted that the 2.6 kernel will have SElinux
    > built in,

    I wonder how much of a performance hit you would call significant. Personally,
    I do not notice a performance difference between a PaX kernel and a non-PaX
    kernel. With the segmentation based protection, the performance impact is
    estimated at 2%.

    And then, even if you are right, and the performance impact is indeed
    significant (let's say 20%). Then you just wait 6 months, for the same price
    you will get a 20% faster CPU that will compensate for the impact. If you
    cannot wait 6 months, you simply pay a hundred bucks more now. A small
    investment that really pays off, once you realise how much a successful
    breakin and the resulting downtime costs.

    It should be noted that systems like RSBAC (which is used in Adamantix) and
    SELinux are as secure as the kernel is. The recent list of Linux kernel exploits
    show that this security is not exactly perfect. So don't expect miracles from
    systems like that, even though some people would like to make you believe
    otherwise.

    Groetjes,
    Peter Busser

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