
Subgraph OS: Adversary-resistant computing platform - weeha
https://subgraph.com/sgos/index.en.html
======
SEJeff
This is a Linux distribution with some clever ideas about container isolation
and using the PAX / grsecurity kernel patchset.

Since it is running Linux, not some minimal RTOS, I take some of their
marketing on the website with a huge grain of salt. When it says things like,
"verifiably trustworthy" and is a Linux distribution, it makes baby Brad
Spengler (Spender) cry. Call me a skeptic, but I'm currently using Linux,
professionally have managed Linux for over a decade, and <3 it entirely. That
being said, I call BS on a Linux distribution that claims what this does.

Great marketing page however!

Written from my Fedora 20 laptop with SELinux enabled and my tinfoil anti-NSA
hat on

~~~
rsync
I would be more enthusiastic about a "trustworthy" and "hardened" distribution
with "container isolation" if it were BSD based with jails (among other
things).

A simpler system, with fewer moving parts, and contributions (perhaps) from
cperciva ?

~~~
mwcampbell
Why BSD over Linux? And which BSD would you start with?

I'd stay far away from SELinux, knowing that added complexity is unlikely to
add security in practice. But is any of the major BSD kernels appreciably
simpler or more secure than the Linux kernel these days? I'm sure that the
Linux kernel has broader hardware support; that would yield an OS that more
people can actually run without restricting their hardware choices. So on
balance, Linux seems to me like a better choice.

To be sure, I'd strip down the userland, starting with the C library; I'd
choose musl over glibc. Actually, my idea of a "trustworthy", "hardened" Linux
distro would look a lot like Alpine Linux (the in-development musl-based
version).

~~~
na85
Truthfully it's the kernel rather than userland I'd be more concerned about.
It might be open-source but it's an enormous piece of software. Heartbleed
showed us that serious vulns can slip through, and AFAIK the kernel hasn't had
a truecrypt-style security audit (which I believe it deserves).

I don't think BSD is necessarily more secure, despite what that Theo blowhard
has to say.

------
brl
Hi Bruce from Subgraph here.

Yesterday we updated our website with information about a new project that
we've been working on since December and made a very small announcement on
Twitter about the website change and this generated more attention than we
were expecting.

So I should clarify the status of the project which is that we haven't
released anything yet, but we've been working on what is described on our
website for the last 6 months. We predict but can't promise that we'll have
something available for brave enthusiastic people to test by the end of
summer. That's the point at which we normally would have announced our project
here.

------
ThinkBeat
I am sick of tired of hearing about projects, lately oten security related
projects that are vaporware.

They have nice websites, nice graphics, very professional, but that is all.
Nice marketing.

The title "Subgraph OS: Adversary-resistant computing platform"

Should be

"Project SubgraphOS is an idea to build a Adversary-resistant computing
platform"

Take me to a really plain website, and state status on the front page

"No release, No source"

But maybe some design documents?

On top of that please say on the front page "Yet another Linux distro"

so people like me dont get the impression that its actually something
interesting written from scratch.

------
selectnull
It's an operating system, supposedly built from ground up. I'm really
sceptical about security if it was just released and build from ground up.

They shyly mention Grsecurity hardened kernel. So is it a linux distro or not?
I don't know, no mention of linux anywhere else.

As someone who might be interested in secure OS but is not an expert in
security, this website leaves me very confused.

~~~
srl
By "operating system" they seem to mean "linux distribution". I suspect that,
like most glamorous crypto project, this will turn out to be woefully
inadequate. (For example, they did their own implementation of openpgp. Not
clear why.)

------
jwildeboer
Where's the source part of this open source company?

------
vertex-four
So... what exactly is this? Could I use it as my main OS? Is it a replacement
for TAILS?

~~~
brl
Yes, Subgraph OS is meant to be used as a general purpose desktop operating
system. There is pressure on TAILS to evolve in this direction by people who
like TAILS and want to use it as their main everyday OS, but this conflicts
with the 'amnesic' philosophy and vision of TAILS as an ephemeral read-only
system. One of the objectives of Subgraph OS is to provide something more
convenient to users who wish to use TAILS persistently.

------
higherpurpose
> Subgraph OS users who install the operating system must have encrypted
> filesystems. It is not optional in Subgraph OS.

I like that. All "secure" operating systems should have that, and _all_
operating systems should have it if they benefit from hardware encryption,
which would make the performance overhead a non-issue.

~~~
justizin
hardware encryption is more difficult to audit, likely to have backdoors,
etc.. djb recently posted some feedback on how to improve available
instructions in x86 for doing the type of maths common in today's crypto code,
which is far more useful.

~~~
iancarroll
Well, encryption with unknown back doors is better then no encryption, I
suppose.

~~~
tlrobinson
Not if it gives you a false sense of security.

------
thinkmassive
Cool site, but I couldn't find anywhere to obtain the software. When will it
be available?

~~~
bauer
I looked all over the site and couldn't find it anywhere, or any mention of it
even being available yet.

------
thomz
Well this is good news. More choices we will have, more privacy we get. Maybe
one day, this kind of OS will be default for everyone and even usable for
"basic" users. I'm really looking forward to try it asap. Keep up the good
work guys.

------
justizin
cool marketing site, show us the code. back to saturday morning cartoons.

------
DanBC
Here's their github for ORCHID (tor on Java?) and VEGA.

[https://github.com/subgraph](https://github.com/subgraph)

