Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 14:48:07 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Projects to improve security (related to C) Message-ID: <v04011708b1da888c2e65@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <27231.900993063@time.cdrom.com> References: Your message of "Mon, 20 Jul 1998 21:48:11 EDT." <v04011703b1d98657693f@[128.113.24.47]>
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At 8:51 PM -0700 7/20/98, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > garance wrote: >> However, I don't want to just drop this issue either. Could we think >> of projects we could do in the next few months, for instance, which >> might help us to improve security? Even if we won't have time to > > Audit. Audit audit audit. Like I said in my previous email, just > *five minutes* looking through the popper sources was enough time to > have my jaw dropping in sheer horror at how badly we'd dropped that > particular ball and I don't think it would take a rocket scientist to > identify the top 10 ports in need of first attention. Start with > ports/net and ports/mail and you'll have more than enough to work on. > > This whole auditing idea is also hardly new or innovative - those who > remember back a year or so will recall my starting a "FreeBSD auditing > project" complete with its own web page, auditors list, etc. Almost > nothing came of it because people just weren't willing to actually > DO THE WORK of auditing the code, they only wanted to talk about how > much it was necessary. :-) Would it help if we increased the work of *not* auditting, such as having the default sprintf (and other risky routines) cause compile-time problems? Auditing as a separate step is more often going to get put off until the developer "has time". If you need to address some of the classic culprits just to get it to compile, you're much more likely to "find the time"... > There's only one solution, one which OpenBSD has made significant > marketing points out of, and that's to go through the code and look > for holes resulting from poor programming practices. Indeed. I like the fact that they're doing this, and that they are able to make those marketting points out of it. Could we hire them to audit all the FreeBSD code, and then we would get the marketting points? :-) --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe security" in the body of the message
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