Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1105934/
Lennart Poettering, Michael Vogt, and Joaquim Rocha have put together a
detailed overview of what the Amutable Operating System (AOS) and
associated infrastructure will look like.
The image-based OS approach enables us to enforce some very strict
but powerful security properties, which elevate the security
posture of the system substantially above traditional Linux
systems. Specifically, let’s highlight seven major essential
security properties of AOS here:
- No Shell + No SSH + No Language Interpreters. By default AOS
does not install a UNIX shell, nor makes remote access via SSH
available on the nodes. Moreover, we do not install any of the usual
language interpreters (Python, Perl, …) by default. For most nodes a
shell or interpreted language support is not required and it removes a
whole class of attacks.- Signed Images Only. On AOS only images that come with Verity
data signed by a signing key listed in the Verity keyring may be
activated.- […]