Gentoo Archives: gentoo-hardened

From: basile <basile@××××××××××××××.edu>
To: gentoo-hardened@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-hardened] Some advise regarding recompiling an entire hardened systems
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:04:56
Message-Id: 49ECB945.5060605@opensource.dyc.edu
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-hardened] Some advise regarding recompiling an entire hardened systems by Thomas Sachau
1 Thomas Sachau wrote:
2 > basile schrieb:
3 >
4 >> Mansour Moufid wrote:
5 >>
6 >>> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Thomas Sachau <tommy@g.o> wrote:
7 >>>
8 >>>
9 >>>> basile schrieb:
10 >>>>
11 >>>>
12 >>>>> Hi, a have a couple of question is for Gordon and Nedd regarding
13 >>>>> rebuilding an entire desktop system with emerge -e world, both amd64
14 >>>>> and
15 >>>>> i686. I'm mostly worried about the security implications of the
16 >>>>> choices I'm making and I'm not 100% sure of my understanding.
17 >>>>>
18 >>>>> 1) Regarding choice of compiler. gcc-config -l gives
19 >>>>>
20 >>>>> [1] x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6
21 >>>>> [2] x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-hardenednopie
22 >>>>> [3] x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-hardenednopiessp
23 >>>>> [4] x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-hardenednossp
24 >>>>> [5] x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-3.4.6-vanilla
25 >>>>> [6] x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-4.1.2
26 >>>>>
27 >>>>> My understanding is that [1] is fully hardened and that [2]-[5] are
28 >>>>> exactly what they say, respectively no pie, no pie nor ssp, no ssp and
29 >>>>> fully vanilla. My confusion is about 4.1.2. What hardening is present
30 >>>>> in it? (Did some hardening which wasn't present in gcc-3 make it to
31 >>>>> gcc-4 vanilla?) What's the best practice here?
32 >>>>>
33 >>>>>
34 >>>> You are right with gcc-3.4.6-r2. How did you install gcc-4? It should
35 >>>> be masked as that version does
36 >>>> not have any builtin hardened features, so is only a normal,
37 >>>> none-hardened gcc-4.1.2
38 >>>>
39 >>>>
40 >>> This can happen when using a non-hardened stage3 tarball during the
41 >>> install, then switching to the hardened profile later.
42 >>>
43 >>> I've noticed it's not immediately clear where to get hardened stages
44 >>> in the documentation. For those wondering, the mirror URL can be found
45 >>> in the topic on #gentoo-hardened, i.e.:
46 >>> http://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/${ARCH}/2008.0/stages/hardened/
47 >>>
48 >>>
49 >>>
50 >> I followed a variation of the upgrade process discussed here:
51 >>
52 >> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/toolchain-upgrade-guide.xml
53 >>
54 >> The differences are I used binutils-2.18 and glibc-2.8_p20080602-r1
55 >>
56 >> I understand that its a VERY EARLY draft, but it proceeded without any
57 >> problems on both i686 and amd64. I'm pretty sure I didn't loose PIE,
58 >> but I'm not so sure about SSP. I'm playing around now with
59 >> -fstack-protector-all in my CFLAGS.
60 >>
61 >>
62 >>
63 >>>>> 2) Regarding the choice of profiles on amd64. I have
64 >>>>>
65 >>>>> [6] hardened/amd64
66 >>>>> [7] hardened/amd64/multilib *
67 >>>>> [10] hardened/linux/amd64
68 >>>>>
69 >>>>> I'm using the multilib and I'm wondering what the security implications
70 >>>>> of this decision. Also, should I be thinking about the newer [10] on
71 >>>>> amd64? What about the similar choice on i686?
72 >>>>>
73 >>>>> Thanks guys.
74 >>>>>
75 >>>>>
76 >>>>>
77 >>>> What security implications should be there?
78 >>>> The newer [10] is still experimental and may change without warning.
79 >>>> Use either [6] or [7] for now.
80 >>>>
81 >>>> --
82 >>>> Thomas Sachau
83 >>>>
84 >>>> Gentoo Linux Developer
85 >>>>
86 >>>>
87 >>>>
88 >> I remember reading about lots of security bugs with emulating
89 >> libraries. I just googled for it to remind myself. So I'm wondering
90 >> whether profile 6 is better than 7.
91 >>
92 >
93 > There may be open bugs with those emul-linux-* packages which currently provide some basic 32bit
94 > libs, but they are not installed by using the profile nor are you forced to use them. If your
95 > reading was about something different, please specify it.
96 >
97 >
98 >
99 http://blog.flameeyes.eu/tag/multilib
100
101
102 --
103
104 Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
105 Chair of Information Technology
106 D'Youville College
107 Buffalo, NY 14201
108 USA
109
110 (716) 829-8197

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