Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 17:08:16 -0500 From: "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." <kdk@daleco.biz> To: bsd hack <time_to_hack@yahoo.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Security features Message-ID: <40FD97D0.9080806@daleco.biz> In-Reply-To: <20040720213002.95461.qmail@web21527.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040720213002.95461.qmail@web21527.mail.yahoo.com>
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bsd hack wrote: >Hi, > I have been trying to understand the security features of FreeBSD. I have read the FreeBSD handbook... I have seen that FreeBSD is mentioned as the most secure OS to use. I dont understand why it's security features are considered to be better than that of the other OS's. I'm kind of new to this and haven't done much research on this. > >I'm basically trying to understand the security features of FreeBSD... Can somebody give me pointers to a few useful links which will help me in understanding the security features in different OS's and how FreeBSD differs. > >-HKR > > Actually, among the BSD's, OpenBSD has the reputation of being "most secure." And, as far as security goes, it's a matter of how the machine and operating system are configured, and monitored. IOW, a paranoid sysadmin goes a long way toward making a system, any system, secure. Also, remember that in reality, the most secure system is one that's not connected to any other system inside something like a bank vault. However, that's not very usable. With FreeBSD, one of the nice things is that you don't have to run any services that are open to the outside world if you don't have to, (compare that to some Windows issues), and the firewall is fully configurable, given some knowledge of the command syntax (try filtering outbound traffic with WinXP's builtin firewall....) Unix-like operating systems had filesystem permissions and uid's before Windows and the like came into existence. Maybe that's part of what someone was thinking when they told you "FreeBSD was the most secure." Now, given that, I certainly feel much more secure with FreeBSD than MS Windows...but it's probably not a really well-founded feeling, other than those things mentioned above. KDK
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