[Techtalk] Fedora Core 3 and SELinux

Caitlyn Martin caitlynmaire at yahoo.com
Sat Nov 13 05:24:08 EST 2004


Hi, Kathryn, and everyone else,
> 
> It seems rather ironic to be concerned about
> backdoors in something which is supposed to 
> *increase* the security of Linux...

Considering how much scrutiny it has received, both
from other (competing) Agencies and the Open Source
community as well, I don't think I'd be terribly
concerned about that.
> 
> I don't actually think that the fact that the
> SELinux folks are employed by the US government is
> a concern.

How many people think about or even know who wrote
what piece of Open Source software packaged with a
typical mainstream distro?  Do you let politics decide
which tools to use?  There are pieces that are
Finnish, American, Mexican, Israeli, Indian, German,
French, Russian, etc... all in there.

> The SELinux folks have actually been around for a
> while, long before Bush was in power. 

Yep.  When I first looked at it Bill Clinton was
President.

> Just because the fellows in the
> White House are fanatics doesn't mean that everyone
> in the US is.

Some are fanatics.  Some are quite reasonable.  An
administration, ANY administration, isn't monolithic. 
The first Bush administration has been notorious for
internal squabbling and policy disagreements.  I also
doubt the President has even the slightest clue how to
code SELinux or any other meaningful piece of
software.  His influence on the project is probably
nil.  The fact that this administration, for better or
worse, takes security more seriously than the previous
one probably helped the project along, but only very
indirectly.
> 
> The question isn't only whether you can trust the
> SELinux folks, but
> whether you can trust the Fedora folks, isn't it? 

Precisely.

All the best,
Caity


		
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