If all kernel bugs are security bugs, how do you keep your Linux safe?

lemmyreader@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 114 points –
If all kernel bugs are security bugs, how do you keep your Linux safe?
zdnet.com
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Great reason to push more code out of the kernel and into user land

Is it HURD'n' time?

I dunno, Stallman, it's been 30 years, you got something for us?

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/LInux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

I think we should just resurrect Plan 9 instead.

Plan 9 is also monolithic, according to wikipedia. For BSD it depends.

I mean, you're right but I still want to see a modernized plan 9, I just think it would be neat.

L4. HURD never panned out, and L4 is where the microkernel research settled: Memory protection, scheduling, IPC in the kernel the rest outside and there's also important insights as to the APIs to do that with. In particular the IPC mechanism is opaque, the kernel doesn't actually read the messages which was the main innovation over Mach.

Literally billions of devices run OKL4, seL4 systems are also in mass production. Think broadband processors, automotive, that kind of stuff.

The kernel being watertight doesn't mean that your system is, though, you generally don't need kernel privileges to exfiltrate any data or generally mess around, root suffices.

If you want to see this happening -- I guess port AMDGPU to an L4?

seL4 is the world’s only hypervisor with a sound worst-case execution-time (WCET) analysis, and as such the only one that can give you actual real-time guarantees, no matter what others may be claiming. (If someone else tells you they can make such guarantees, ask them to make them in public so Gernot can call out their bullshit.)

That bit on their FAQ is amusing.

So what you are saying is “mach was right”?

Everybody knows it was. Even Linus said a microkernel architecture was better. He just wanted something working “now” for his hobby project, and microkernel research was still ongoing then.