U.S. Dept. of Defense offers up tiny, secure Linux distro...

[Bruce B]

Some of you guys! You probably don't trust pirates either.

I trust the Department of Defense Linux a lot. I'm posting from it now and I've not seen one Drone, not even an AH-64 Apache.

~

[Moose On The Loose]

"They could have just used Puppy" -surely you jest. Puppy is absolutely the furthest you can get from being 'secure'! Anybody who says otherwise is hiding their head in the sand and has no idea at all about what is secure.

I won't point out that the copy of 4.31 I use is still exactly as it was when I burned the ISO onto the CD. That is really cheating on the question of security.

In many ways, puppy does things in a manner that improves security. By keeping things very simple, the odds of a flaw are reduced. By not mounting every drive at startup, the drives are less likely to get written. When you first boot puppy it doesn't connect to the network. If you stay off the network you are a lot safer.

Microsofts NT was supposed to be reasonably secure. It turned out to have holes big enough you could drive a truck through. If you truly want security, the best option is to keep things very simple and only let a machine do those things it is needed for.

[DPUP5520]

Hello,
Well, it doesnt, and in fact wont, mount a native drive..
But I`d be afraid to connect it to the net....
Gonna pick at it some more later, and see whats REALLY there..LOL
Remarkably similar to Puppy, in "run as root" and package selection...
I`ll bet the initrd has some interesting stuff in it..
The dir structure is a cross linked mess, to me at least...
But at 135mb, its hiding something...
Basically, its Icewm, Firefox and Leafpad..
And I wonder what else??

A big part of the distro is the smartcard drivers and programs which is why i assume it is so big in that sense. Btw has anyone tried to get smartcards working on puppy i mentioned before i tried and failed horribly. I for one trust that there are no hidden backdoors intentionally put in as if this was made to access secure dod sites and transfer sensitive dod information why would they risk a backdoor which would eventually be found and compromised.

[amigo]

"still exactly as it was when I burned the ISO" -that's of course correct. But you are ignoring what your computer may do while you are on-line. This is why I always argue with the 'puppy is secure' statements. Even though your OS, as loaded, may be clean, attacks can occur while you are running. This is also no help against lack of anonymity. Of course most users don't have any *visible* problems -maybe not any at all. But it simply madness to assume that you are safe because you run Puppy or run from RAM, etc. All the discussions here about 'security' are too one-sided and don't touch on the full gamut of problems which can occur. Viruses, trojan, root-kits, lack of anonymity, bot-nets -they are all diferent things and each should be addressed in its' own way.

[amigo]

@puppylvr, just because the command 'mount' is missing or apparently won't mount a drive does not mean that the distro doesn't or can't mount a drive. The code in the mount program uses the kernel system call mount() which can be integrated into any program you like. So, the thing could be actually mounting everything available on the machine, without showing any evidence of it....

[nooby]

I know there is google to use but may I kindly ask what is that "smartcard"?

Why does Puppy fail to use them? Does not Puppeee even have those drivers? Are the smartcard hardware producers keeping the drivers proprietary? could one borrow those drivers from this distro and reuse it on Puppy maybe?

How does one know if one have a smartcard or not? Is it a BankCard with Chip like the ones from France maybe? What else can it be?

[amigo]

Aren't SmartCards like your crecit card (or EC card?) -the ones with a little square of gold-colored metal in them which contains a small chip?

[DPUP5520]

Sorry for my late reply but yes they have the small 32kb chip in them and are used by military/government to access certain dod websites and for access to military bases. No puppy that ive seen can handle smartcards however ubuntu, and mint are both able to use smartcards and have both the programs and drivers to use them.

@nooby if you aren't military and dont work for the government chances are good you do not have one.