Grsecurity Developer Spender's Feelings on the State of Linux Security
Aye, too many people have this defeatist attitude that since perfect security will never be possible, therefore the only valid solution is reactive security (bug-patch cycles). Patch dependence is considered too entrenched for making some changes like replacing ambient authority with capabilities, using failure-oblivious computing [1] to redirect invalid reads and writes, using separation kernels, information flow control, proper MLS [2], program shepherding for origin and control flow monitoring [3] and general fault tolerance/self-healing [4].<p>I used to look up to Linus Torvalds as many did, but am increasingly beginning to see him as a threat to the advancement of the industry with his faux pragmatism that has led him to speak out against everything from security to microkernels and kernel debuggers.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~cristic/papers/fo-osdi-04.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~cristic/papers/fo-osdi-04.pdf</a><p>[2] <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.52.366&rep=rep1&type=pdf" rel="nofollow">http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.52....</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec02/full_papers/kiriansky/kiriansky.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec02/full_papers/kiria...</a><p>[4] <a href="https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~angelos/Papers/2007/mmm-acns-self.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~angelos/Papers/2007/mmm-acns-se...</a>