Backtrack as a hardened desktop?

[Gullible Jones]

Hi guys...

I've been eyeing Backtrack for a little while to potentially use on my laptop, but I'm a bit uncertain about its capabilities. I know it's a security-centric distribution, focusing on penetration testing... But does it have any defensive security measures by default, e.g. a hardened kernel? Or is it not designed with that sort of thing in mind?

And if not... Can anyone point me to a list of distros that have hardened kernels in their repositories, or otherwise give me some advice on which ones provide e.g. grsecurity or RSBAC kernels?

TIA...

[purehate]

No backtrack is a offensive tool. Check out gentoo linux. Thats what i use and they have hardened kernel sources plus you can enable selinux if you wish.

[Barry]

Heh, selinux. "The kernel has detected a left mouse click, accept command, yes or no".

[loftrat]

Heh, selinux. "The kernel has detected a left mouse click, accept command, yes or no".

Followed by:

"The Kernel has detected that the kernel detected a left mouse click and then warned you about the detection. You then clicked yes to accept the command and the Kernel detected your click. Would you like to accept your acceptance?"

[ShadowKill]

Followed by:

"The Kernel has detected that the kernel detected a left mouse click and then warned you about the detection. You then clicked yes to accept the command and the Kernel detected your click. Would you like to accept your acceptance?"

Wait........what about Windows?

[Barry]

Wait........what about Windows?

Selinux makes Windows Vista's security look like dos.

[jhonnycage828]

Selinux makes Windows Vista's security look like dos.

So does that mean selinux is like... HUGE overkill? Vista's hard to run any kind of useful remote code with the whole user account control crap... You can't even put anything into the C:\windows\system32 folder without a window popping up asking for acceptance.... If you hope to do anything useful best hope to catch a VNC injection... I hate Vista...

[ShadowKill]

So does that mean selinux is like... HUGE overkill? Vista's hard to run any kind of useful remote code with the whole user account control crap... You can't even put anything into the C:\windows\system32 folder without a window popping up asking for acceptance.... If you hope to do anything useful best hope to catch a VNC injection... I hate Vista...

You know, minus the whole complete bypass of initial user logon, to include the administrator account(s), issue. I'm sure that can't help things can it?

[Barry]

So does that mean selinux is like... HUGE overkill? Vista's hard to run any kind of useful remote code with the whole user account control crap... You can't even put anything into the C:\windows\system32 folder without a window popping up asking for acceptance.... If you hope to do anything useful best hope to catch a VNC injection... I hate Vista...

I don't run selinux, but I am running linux off a system that has everything but /boot encrypted. Here's the funny part though, my computer won't finish booting without my thumb drive inserted, but it auto logs in. How's that for backwards f'ed up security.

[ShadowKill]

I don't run selinux, but I am running linux off a system that has everything but /boot encrypted. Here's the funny part though, my computer won't finish booting without my thumb drive inserted, but it auto logs in. How's that for backwards f'ed up security.

Hahaha, fail!