plenty900@yahoo.com wrote:

> I've learned that there are bits of NSA's SELinux in various places
> in kernel 2.6. How can I be sure that Big Brother isn't using back
> doors or bugs to break into my computer? Especially with all the
> illegal spying done these days... How much safer would it be to just
> switch back to 2.4 or 2.5?

Well if you understood what SELinux is, then you wouldn't be asking such
a naive question.

SELinux enforces Mandatory Access Controls as an /additional/ security
measure to the usual authentication and security methods on a typical
GNU/Linux system. It doesn't replace the standard security of
traditional Unix permissions; PAM and iptables, it merely further
defines the specific contexts that control the scope of access for any
given process such that, for example, even root may be denied access to
certain parts of the system, according to the defined policy.

The fact that the implementation of this is entirely transparent, and
the sources for SELinux components are freely available, would suggest
that if the NSA did in fact wish to install "back doors", then surely
someone in the Free Software development community would have noticed.

Note that none of this has anything whatsoever to do with encryption;
there is no random number generation in any part of SELinux. If you're
looking for back doors, then I suggest you read this:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archive...c_drbg_ad.html

--
K.
http://slated.org

..----
| 'When it comes to knowledge, "ownership" just doesn't make sense'
| ~ Cory Doctorow, The Guardian. http://tinyurl.com/22bgx8
`----

Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
10:24:05 up 75 days, 7:59, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00