Security

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

Present distribs are based on a classic Unix model: they are lax on
services running because they think most boxes will be worsktations
not in direct contact with the Internet and that the system
adminstrator will be a full time sysadmin who will know he has to
close unneded services on exposed machines.

Of course these hypotheses are absurd when you target mass usage like
the Linux people should.  Here you will have people directly exposed
(someone could attack you just when you are online) and who in
addition cannot afford to spend days or weeks studying security: that
means Indy must be reasonably secure out of the box.

Antaeus provides the following in this area: "Personal station"
installation class where services of dubious utiulity for personal
users are quite simply not installed, gfcc a user friendly tool for
managaing IPCHAINS and block ports from access coming from outside.
Of course this is not enough because the person need to know about the
problem, about ports and then about gfcc ("A port???  Is that
something where ships go")

For next release I am comitted to include lokkit who requirres far
less knowledge than gfcc (it asks you some questions about usage and
blocs every dangerous service and every unneeded one) however we still
have the problem of the user knowing in the first place about lokkit.

Three solutions: integrate it on install, make it a post install
question (ie after install the user reboots and before getting to
first login prompt he is dropped into post install (Suse uses this
tyechnique) or tell it in the documentation and hope for the best.
:-)

We would also need volunteering for taking caharge about the finding
and testing of security related tools and studying Indy for
integrating into it.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org