NetBSD and OpenBSD capabilities as of 2004 ?
Chapman Flack <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.os.netbsd.devel.crypto |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
I am a newbie to *BSD (though not to UNIX in general) and getting ready to choose a *BSD for a new box. I still would like a better understanding of how Net- and Open- differ in security and crypto support. From what I can see by poring over both web sites, the differences seem minimal, but I have not found a page that actually tries to enumerate differences; I think that would be helpful. openbsd.org has two detailed pages, security.html and crypto.html, that hype a number of features that they have (but without quite coming out and saying they are exclusive to OpenBSD), and netbsd.org has a paragraph in Misc/features.html saying "We believe in security without the hype" and that seems to be true ... both parts. Yes, NetBSD seems to have comparable features to most those hyped by OpenBSD, and yes, NetBSD seems to have very little interest in hyping them. I like that approach but it's a little vague; hype or no hype, the information should be available to someone who wants to choose a BSD flavor. I chose tech-crypto for this post because one concrete difference between the two flavors that OpenBSD hypes heavily is the Canadian export laws allowing integrated strong crypto in Open-. But I can see many comparable crypto features mentioned in the Net- pages. I would be happy if someone could give a quick but non-vague summary of any specific points where NetBSD and OpenBSD differ in crypto functionality as a consequence of the export regs or anything else. I searched over all the NetBSD list archives but many of the hits were five or more years old and I'm sure the comparison has changed significantly since then. Also (security related but not exactly crypto, sorry if OT), OpenBSD hypes some compiler-chain features they use to reorder stack frames and similar techniques to complicate stack-smashing. I'm guessing these same features are available to Net- if it's the same tool chain, but does anyone know offhand if they are being used as systematically in NetBSD? So, those are my technical questions; thanks for reading. I'd suggest that any reasonably thorough response would make a good reference page on the NetBSD web site, but for that I'd have to crosspost to -advocacy. Cheers, Chapman Flack [email protected]