OSEC

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Subject: Re: The NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux
From: Michael H. Warfield (mhwWITTSEND.COM)
Date: Fri Dec 22 2000 - 10:42:42 CST

On Fri, Dec 22, 2000 at 05:18:42AM -0700, Scott D. Yelich wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, Ralf-Philipp Weinmann wrote:
> > citing http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/background.html:
> > [...]
> > The result is available for download at the above URL
> > as well. Has anyone here toyed with it already ?
> > Cheers,
> > -Ralf

> Seems like this is a "demo" ... would anyone be able to compare this
> system to a system that is not attempting to be a demo -- such as
> Pitbull (solaris?)? It frightens me to think that anyone would
> trust linux :-> but, alas, who knows. Maybe is enough sugar is
> poured on top, it just won't continue to smell so bad.

        Huh? What was this? A troll? Must have been. Nobody could
be that clueless... Ok... Let's nibble...

        The government seem to feel that it makes a lot MORE sense to
trust something that they have the sources for and that they don't
have to be held captive to a vendors path and fixes and support (or
lack thereof).

        My God! Look at the mess Microsoft had in the version 1 security
service provider. That wasn't getting fixed until the Samba team started
kicking over those rocks and exposed it for the joke that it was...

        Solaris is rather precious, too... Took Sun over a year to fix
the rsh hole that Alan Cox reported to them. Took them over 9 months
to finally tell me that there would be no fix for the NISNuke problem
and that they recommended installing open source versions of the finger
daemon (they really made that recommendation).

        Frightens me that anyone would trust a closed source operating
system for security. :->

        (A trolling we will go, a trolling we will go, a hie ho the
merry'o, a trolling we will go...)

> Scott

        Mike 

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