On Wed, 5 Mar 2008 05:13:14 -0800 (PST)
plenty900@yahoo.com wrote:

> > Well if you understood what SELinux is, then you wouldn't be asking
> > such a naive question.
>
> If you understood what the NSA is, you wouldn't be making such a naive
> response.

Consider that SELinux is fully open source and reviewed at a large
scale. It doesn't contain any questionable parts (like cryptographic
code or esoteric algorithms), which could be hard to reason about.
Please review the source code and decide yourself, whether it's safe to
use SELinux-enabled kernels.

The major downside of SELinux is its complexity. That's why I'd prefer
other packages for ACLs and other security techniques, but not because
of some conspiracy theories.

You could just as well claim that alien technology is being explored at
Area 51. Have you ever been there? No. Unlike Area 51, you can view
the source code of SELinux. That's a major difference.

Of course this doesn't mean that there can't be any NSA backdoors in the
kernel, but if the NSA is smart, they have incorporated the backdoors
elsewhere, not in the SELinux part of the kernel. In that sense,
software with a restricted developer group may be more secure.


Regards,
Ertugrul.


--
http://ertes.de/