Annotation of www/security.html, Revision 1.47
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1.20 deraadt 4: <title>OpenBSD Security</title>
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1.2 deraadt 15: <img alt="[OpenBSD]" SRC="/images/smalltitle.gif">
1.1 deraadt 16:
1.2 deraadt 17: <p>
1.12 deraadt 18: <h3><font color=#e00000><strong>OpenBSD Security Views</strong></font></h3>
1.22 deraadt 19:
1.14 deraadt 20: OpenBSD believes in strong security. Our aspiration is to be NUMBER
1.22 deraadt 21: ONE in the industry for security (if we are not already there). Our
22: open software development model permits us to take a more
23: uncompromising view towards increased security than Sun, SGI, IBM, HP,
24: or other vendors are able to. We can make changes the vendors would
1.27 deraadt 25: not make. Also, since OpenBSD is exported with <a href=crypto.html>
1.45 deraadt 26: cryptography</a>, we are able to take cryptographic approaches towards
27: fixing security problems.<p>
1.18 deraadt 28:
1.45 deraadt 29: Like many readers of the
1.13 deraadt 30: <a href=http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/index.html>
1.18 deraadt 31: BUGTRAQ mailing list</a>,
1.45 deraadt 32: we believe in full disclosure of security problems. Security
33: information moves very fast in cracker circles. On the other hand,
34: our experience is that coding and releasing of proper security fixes
35: typically requires about an hour of work -- very fast fix turnaround
36: is possible. Thus we think that full disclosure helps the people who
1.22 deraadt 37: really care about security.<p>
1.15 deraadt 38:
1.12 deraadt 39: Our security auditing team typically has between six and twelve
1.45 deraadt 40: members who continue to search for and fix new security holes. We
41: have been auditing since the summer of 1996. The process we follow to
42: increase security is simply a comprehensive file-by-file analysis of
43: every critical software component. Flaws have been found in just
44: about every area of the system. Entire new classes of security
45: problems have been found during our the audit, and often source code
46: which had been audited earlier needs re-auditing with these new flaws
47: in mind. Code often gets audited multiple times, and by multiple
48: people with different auditing skills.<p>
1.12 deraadt 49:
1.31 deraadt 50: Some members of our security auditing team work for
51: <a href=http://www.secnet.com>Secure Networks</a>, the company that
1.32 deraadt 52: makes the industry's premier network security scanning software
53: package Ballista.
1.31 deraadt 54: This company does a lot of security research, and this fits in well
1.45 deraadt 55: with the OpenBSD stance. OpenBSD passes Ballista's tests with flying
56: colours.<p>
1.31 deraadt 57:
1.34 deraadt 58: Another facet of our security auditing process is its proactiveness.
1.45 deraadt 59: In most cases we have found that the determination of exploitability
60: is not an issue. During our ongoing auditing process we find many
61: bugs, and endeavor to fix them even though exploitability is not
62: proven. We fix the bug, and we move on to find other bugs to fix. We
63: have fixed many simple and obvious careless programming errors in code
64: and only months later discovered that the problems were in fact
65: exploitable. (Or, more likely someone on
66: <a href=http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/index.html>BUGTRAQ</a>
67: would report that other operating systems were vulnerable to a `newly
68: discovered problem', and then it would be discovered that OpenBSD had
69: been fixed in a previous release). In other cases we have been saved
70: from full exploitability of complex step-by-step attacks because we
71: had fixed one of the intermediate steps. An example of where we
72: managed such a success is the
1.30 deraadt 73: <a href=http://www.secnet.com/sni-advisories/sni-19.bsd.lpd.advisory.html>
1.35 deraadt 74: lpd advisory from Secure Networks.</a><p>
1.29 deraadt 75:
1.45 deraadt 76: Our proactive auditing process has really paid off. Statements like
1.35 deraadt 77: ``This problem was fixed in OpenBSD about 6 months ago'' have become
1.45 deraadt 78: commonplace in security forums like
79: <a href=http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/index.html>BUGTRAQ</a>.<p>
1.35 deraadt 80:
1.45 deraadt 81: The most intense part of our security auditing happened immediately
82: before the OpenBSD 2.0 release and during the 2.0->2.1 transition,
83: over the last third of 1996 and first half of 1997. Thousands (yes,
84: thousands) of security issues were fixed rapidly over this year-long
85: period; bugs like the standard buffer overflows, protocol
86: implementation weaknesses, information gathering, and filesystem
87: races. Hence most of the security problems that we encountered were
88: fixed before our 2.1 release, and then a far smaller number needed
89: fixing for our 2.2 release. We do not find as many problems anymore,
90: it is simply a case of diminishing returns. Recently the security
91: problems we find and fix tend to be significantly more obscure or
92: complicated. Still we will persist for a number of reasons:<p>
1.36 deraadt 93:
1.35 deraadt 94: <ul>
1.45 deraadt 95: <li>Occasionally we find a simple problem we missed earlier. Doh!
1.35 deraadt 96: <li>Security is like an arms race; the best attackers will continue
1.45 deraadt 97: to search for more complicated exploits, so we will too.
98: <li>Finding and fixing subtle flaws in complicated software is
99: a lot of fun.
1.35 deraadt 100: </ul>
1.15 deraadt 101:
1.14 deraadt 102: The auditing process is not over yet, and as you can see we continue
1.28 deraadt 103: to find and fix new security flaws.<p>
1.12 deraadt 104:
105: <p>
106: <h3><font color=#e00000><strong>OpenBSD 2.1 Security Advisories</strong></font></h3>
1.11 deraadt 107: These are the OpenBSD 2.1 advisories. All these problems are solved
1.45 deraadt 108: in <a href=22.html>OpenBSD 2.2</a>. Some of these problems still
109: exist in other operating systems. (If you are running OpenBSD 2.1, we
110: would strongly recommend an upgrade to the newest release, as this
111: patch list only attempts at fixing the most important security
112: problems. In particular, OpenBSD 2.2 fixes numerous localhost
113: security problems. Many of those problems were solved in ways which
114: make it hard for us to provide patches).
1.1 deraadt 115:
116: <ul>
1.27 deraadt 117: <li><a href=advisories/rfork>Rfork() system call flaw (patch included)</a>
118: <li><a href=advisories/procfs>Procfs flaws (patch included)</a>
119: <li><a href=advisories/signals>Deviant Signals (patch included)</a>
1.9 deraadt 120: </ul>
121:
122: <p>
1.12 deraadt 123: <h3><font color=#e00000><strong>OpenBSD 2.2 Security Advisories</strong></font></h3>
1.45 deraadt 124: These are the OpenBSD 2.2 advisories. All these problems are solved
125: in <a href=anoncvs.html>OpenBSD current</a>. Some of these problems
126: still exist in other operating systems. (The supplied patches are for
127: OpenBSD 2.2; they may or may not work on OpenBSD 2.1).
1.9 deraadt 128:
129: <ul>
1.40 deraadt 130: <li><a href=errata.html#f00f>Intel P5 f00f lockup (patch included).</a>
131: <li><a href=advisories/sourceroute>Sourcerouted Packet Acceptance.</a>
132: A patch is available <a href=errata.html#sourceroute>here</a>.
133: <li><a href=errata.html#ruserok>Setuid coredump & Ruserok() flaw (patch included).</a>
1.47 ! deraadt 134: <li><a href=advisories/mmap>Read-write mmap() flaw.</a>
1.40 deraadt 135: Revision 3 of the patch is available <a href=errata.html#mmap>here</a>
136: <li><a href=errata.html#ldso>MIPS ld.so flaw (patch included).</a>
1.43 deraadt 137: <li><a href=errata.html#mountd>Accidental NFS filesystem export (patch included).</a>
1.46 deraadt 138: <li><a href=errata.html#named>Overflow in named fake-iquery (patch included).</a>
139: <li><a href=errata.html#ping>Overflow in ping -R (patch included).</a>
1.1 deraadt 140: </ul>
141:
1.21 deraadt 142: <p>
143: <h3><font color=#e00000><strong>Watching our Security Changes</strong></font></h3>
144: Since we take a proactive stance with security, we are continually
145: finding and fixing new security problems. Not all of these problems
1.45 deraadt 146: get widely reported because (as stated earlier); many of them are not
147: confirmed to be exploitable; many simple bugs we fix do turn out to
148: have security consequences we could not predict. We do not have the
149: time resources to make these changes available in the above format.<p>
1.21 deraadt 150:
151: Thus there are usually minor security fixes in the current source code
152: beyond the previous major OpenBSD release. We make a limited
1.45 deraadt 153: guarantee that these problems are of minimal impact and unproven
1.44 ian 154: exploitability. If we discover that a problem definitely matters for
1.45 deraadt 155: security, patches will show up here <strong>VERY</strong> quickly.<p>
1.21 deraadt 156:
1.45 deraadt 157: People who are really concerned with security can do a number of
158: things:<p>
1.21 deraadt 159:
160: <ul>
161: <li>If you understand security issues, watch our
1.27 deraadt 162: <a href=mail.html>source-changes mailing list</a> and keep an
1.23 deraadt 163: eye out for things which appear security related. Since
1.21 deraadt 164: exploitability is not proven for many of the fixes we make,
165: do not expect the relevant commit message to say "SECURITY FIX!".
166: If a problem is proven and serious, a patch will be available
167: here very shortly after.
168: <li>Track our current source code tree, and teach yourself how to do a
1.29 deraadt 169: complete system build from time to time (read /usr/src/Makefile
170: carefully). Users can make the assumption that the current
171: source tree always has stronger security than the previous release.
1.45 deraadt 172: However, building your own system from source code is not trivial;
173: it is nearly 300MB of source code, and problems do occur as we
174: transition between major releases.
1.29 deraadt 175: <li>Install a binary <a href=snapshots.html>snapshot</a> for your
176: architecure, which are made available fairly often. For
177: instance, an i386 snapshot is typically made available weekly.
1.21 deraadt 178: </ul>
179:
1.9 deraadt 180: <p>
1.12 deraadt 181: <h3><font color=#e00000><strong>Other Resources</strong></font></h3>
1.3 deraadt 182: Other security advisories that have (in the past) affected OpenBSD can
1.4 deraadt 183: be found at the <a href=http://www.secnet.com/nav1.html>Secure Networks archive</a>.
1.25 deraadt 184: Some OpenBSD audit team members worked with Secure Networks on discovering
185: and solving the problems detailed in some of their security advisories.
1.3 deraadt 186:
1.5 deraadt 187: <p> If you find a new security problem, you can mail it to
1.6 deraadt 188: <a href=mailto:deraadt@openbsd.org>deraadt@openbsd.org</a>.
1.7 deraadt 189: <br>
1.5 deraadt 190: If you wish to PGP encode it (but please only do so if privacy is very
1.27 deraadt 191: urgent, since it is inconvenient) use this <a href=advisories/pgpkey>pgp key</a>.
1.5 deraadt 192:
1.2 deraadt 193: <hr>
1.27 deraadt 194: <a href=index.html><img src=/back.gif border=0 alt=OpenBSD></a>
1.24 deraadt 195: <a href=mailto:www@openbsd.org>www@openbsd.org</a>
196: <br>
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1.1 deraadt 198:
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