61–70 of 208 posts
Why doesn't OpenBSD do KASLR?
"The difference between the two is that KARL loads a different kernel binary in the same place, while KASLR loads the same binary in random locations. Same goal, different paths."
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/openbsd-will-...
I know it's often mentioned, but I love the simplicity of OpenBSD. Thank you all for the great work.
To some extent, I like that simplicity too (especially security wise) but I wonder if they are taking it too far.
Why doesn't OpenBSD do KASLR?
The current approach, called KARL, relinks the kernel so that while it may load at the same address, symbols internally do not have the same offset. Learning the address of printf will not reveal the address of malloc and so forth. In the context of kernel defense, I would argue this is more effective.
Also, simply as a practical matter, the bootloader and kernel are tightly coupled in ways that make altering the load address a nontrivial endeavor.
Why doesn't OpenBSD do KASLR?
You'd be shocked to know how long after this was shown academically to be a Good Idea™ it took to get it into operating systems like Windows. The reason back then was because application programmers depended (incorrectly!) on sequential allocations so when you started randomizing things you'd break stuff. Idk if that's the case here but its been a big reason historically. I know OpenBSD doesn't prioritize new feature…
I know it's often mentioned, but I love the simplicity of OpenBSD. Thank you all for the great work.
Well, simplicity is one thing, but I was shocked to learn that it doesn't even come with the complete POSIX toolbox (e.g. out of the box awk is missing). And finding out that `ftp` also handles http and https was a bit weird too. To some extent, I like that simplicity too (especially security wise) but I wonder if they are taking it too far.
Been running 6.5 snapshots in my travel laptop for some weeks and everything just works. The laptop is a ThinkPad X200 which is a bit slow for my needs, but upgrading it to ThinkPad X230 later this week should help. I really enjoy how simple the system is after all these years with Linux. I will always continue using Linux in my main computers, but for surfing, some hobby programming and as a travel OS OpenBSD defini…
> but for surfing, some hobby programming and as a travel OS OpenBSD definitely won me over. Mac OS X has won me (and many others) over when it comes to these topics. I'm curious why BSD would be your choice. It sounds painful?
Using Mac OS X or Windows will give me a headache. I just don't like their user interface. And I've used both of them a lot; I had my G4 iMac with 10.0.0 back in the days, and kind of liked 10.3.0 until Linux won me over again.
>Remove files no longer included in the current release of perl(1):
Do they consider this a production-grade operating system or a toy one? Why couldn't it be done with a package manager?
I know it's often mentioned, but I love the simplicity of OpenBSD. Thank you all for the great work.
Well, simplicity is one thing, but I was shocked to learn that it doesn't even come with the complete POSIX toolbox (e.g. out of the box awk is missing). And finding out that `ftp` also handles http and https was a bit weird too. To some extent, I like that simplicity too (especially security wise) but I wonder if they are taking it too far.
>HOWTO upgrade >Remove files no longer included in the current release of perl(1): Do they consider this a production-grade operating system or a toy one? Why couldn't it be done with a package manager?
You don't have to remove those files, the upgrade guide simply indicates they're no longer required.