Re: How safe is a "Limited" XP account?

From: André Gulliksen (andre.gulliksen_at_start.no)
Date: 02/25/05 

Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:54:01 +0100

Twisted One wrote:
> Todd H. wrote:
>> OpenBSD is regarded by many as one of the most secure OS's out
>> there. Neither Linux nor WinXP really come close.
>
> How is Linux worse?

The basic ideology behind OpenBSD is different than most OSes. Security has
top priority (even higher than functionality, it may seem at times), and a
lot of time and manpower is spent debugging source code not only for known
bugs and vulnerabilites, but even to weed out bad coding which may or may
not prove to cause problems at some stage.

There have been similar attempts to produce high security Linux
distributions, such as Adamantix, Trustix and Hardened Gentoo. Also, I hear
that Novell SuSe Linux Enterprise Server 9 recently passed the Common
Criteria Controlled Access Protection Profile/Evaluation Assurance Level 4+,
which is supposed to be the highest security certification given to any
current Linux distribution.

> Too bad there are now actually some almost-usable linux distros
> (ubuntu) and no openbsd distros worthy of note. :P

What is your criteria for "usable"? What do you use it for? I have used
OpenBSD for firewalls and web servers, among other things, and it worked
fine for me.

On a side note: There is no such thing as an OpenBSD "distro". The same goes
for any other BSD. Instead, you have branches and forks. For instance,
OpenBSD itself is a fork off NetBSD.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: How safe is a "Limited" XP account?
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    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: How safe is a "Limited" XP account?
    ... Neither Linux nor WinXP really come close. ... The basic ideology behind OpenBSD is different than most OSes. ... There have been similar attempts to produce high security Linux ... you have branches and forks. ...
    (comp.os.ms-windows.nt.admin.security)