Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is because the ROP gadget hardening OpenBSD does is generally considered to be mostly useless by other kernels, which are moving to hardware-enforced control flow integrity instead.
Is the ROP gadget hardening OpenBSD does mostly useless tho? Can you elaborate?
OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
51–60 of 72 posts
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#52I was just discussing this sort of thing with some colleagues. Because the stack frame for main contains a bunch of other stuff - environment variables, cli args, etc - it makes it unreliable to try to instrument Linux systems and collect that information. A process can change its name, args, env, at any time. That sort of information is really helpful for forensics. Currently your only option is to pull data directl…
You’re forgetting statically compiled binaries, which are very important for ease of deployment and distro-agnostic execution.
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the ROP gadget hardening OpenBSD does mostly useless tho? Can you elaborate?
ARM for instance has pointer authentication built into its hardware since version 8.3 of the ISA. While it's not the same implementation as OpenBSD, it has the same practical effect of making sure the return address is valid.
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#54Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is because the ROP gadget hardening OpenBSD does is generally considered to be mostly useless by other kernels, which are moving to hardware-enforced control flow integrity instead.
Is the ROP gadget hardening OpenBSD does mostly useless tho? Can you elaborate?
These mitigations don’t really harm anything so they’re not bad, per se, but they’re definitely not particularly impactful when to comes to security so nobody else really thinks it’s worth implementing them. There’s a lot of stuff like this in OpenBSD, but to be fair a lot of other projects are also bad at making mitigations that aren’t very useful. Reading writeups on CTFtime or, heaven forbid, imagining what exploits would look like is sadly too common.
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#56Now all we need is for PROT_EXEC to not imply PROT_READ like Android.
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bitcoin donation via BitPay: The OpenBSD Foundation can accept donations in BTC via BitPay
Yeah, but ideally you should make a donation of lasting value.
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bitcoin donation via BitPay: The OpenBSD Foundation can accept donations in BTC via BitPay
Yeah, but ideally you should make a donation of lasting value.
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#59This security tech usually ends up in other platforms too, strongly recommend donating to their work: https://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html
+1...but OpenBSD's webmaster might want to update that page, so it doesn't link to their 2020 Fundraising Campaign. (Their current Campaign - https://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2022.html ) And "This security tech usually..." is a bit too modest. Just one example - OpenBSD is the origin of OpenSSH, which has been rather widely used for a decade or two now.
Re: OpenBSD may soon gain further memory protections: immutable userland mappings
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
And thus the failure of BSD-style licensing is thrown into sharp relief: Why are these projects that are used by many large and extraordinarily profitable tech enterprises dependent on community donations? I recommend not donating, because to do so directly supports corporate parasitism.
There used to be complaint from OpenBSD that large corporate users of OpenSSH weren't donating anything, so I sent them $100. Those days appear to be over. https://www.theregister.com/2015/07/08/microsoft_donates_to_...
MS : $25k - $50k
Google , FB : $10k - $25k
For them, that's like saying "Hi". For the financial value the OpenBSD foundation is creating, that's a miniscule return.