[haiku-development] Re: Security
- From: Edward Robbins <edd.robbins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2014 22:08:43 +0100
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Wayne Peter Corwin <
wayne.peter.corwin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Monday, September 01, 2014 at 10:14 PM, "Axel Dörfler" <
> axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
>
> >> I think Haiku is not a worthwhile target either.
>
> Sorry, but the naive alarm went off.
>
> Security through obscurity is really stupid and dangerous. OS's are not
> targets, but people and companies are (given enough value on the system,
> intrudes will surely take the time to investigate Haiku). Moreover, entire
> classes of attacks are OS agnostic, but OS's can protect against them.
>
> Finally, to become worthwhile, Haiku must be secure ;)
>
While the above is true, it is also true that the likelihood of attack
against haiku is currently very small. While security through obscurity is
something to watch out for, no one is saying "we don't bother with security
because no one would bother attacking haiku", or "haiku is really secure
because it is obscure" or "why not run your credit card processing server
on haiku". Axel's mail was informative about the state of security in
haiku, and nowhere near naive unless you take that single comment out of
context.
Haiku is alpha software, and although in some instances where you know
roughly what is going on (e.g. using ssh) you can be somewhat confident of
"security", it isn't suggested to use haiku for anything sensitive,
particularly in the case where, as you suggest, you or your company (or
your data) may be a target. Hell, haiku isn't even guaranteed not to simply
lose your data (and comes with, or at least recently used to, warnings to
that effect). No one advertises haiku as being secure, and "security
through obscurity" is a worn out mantra that doesn't apply here.
Ed
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