I’m personally motivated in a non-commercial way to supply everyone with as much cybersecurity as possible in the interests of civlization, especially now. I’ve just finished what I wanted to releae as “set” 2 days ago and it’s time to announce them.
I’m the former Web Application Security Team Lead for the National Computer Center, Research Triangle Park, having been contracted to the EPA by the now defunct Computer Sciences Corporation.
If you have some extra hardware not really being used I would suggest perhaps a great use of it would be to create yourself a hardened platform, just in case, to protect your sensitive data on an emminently stable platform going forward.
Maybe you’ve always wanted to try a BSD, well now is a great time to do that. They are super stable, super reliable, community drive, and you are in control of everything.
I would also like to mention that if you’d like to go extra hard consider Hardened BSD. Another alternative is using grsecurity/PaX kernel patched Alpine Linux as a Desktop choosing crypt full disk encryption during setup + AppArmor.
Just as an example you can get your hands on a $250 Thinkpad T495 and installing GhostBSD on it is as simple to setup as Linux Mint and runs as fast as a brand new 2023 Windows laptop. If you choose Dragonfly BSD, the fastest BSD, on a T495 (the lastest year fully BSD compatible laptop), my repo will completely configure it for you, complete with all applications needed for a professional developer.
In addition to that I’ve created a Network Based Firefox hardening solution that wipes the extremely profitable, For-Profit, Mozilla Corporation off your Internet and easily combines with Arkenfox. It removes Mozilla servers from being contacted by any application or service on your machine and does not interfere with web page rendering.
I’ve created my own Git Repository using Gogs (which Gitea is based on) where you can get all the goods here:
Latest Software
Main Website
https://www.quadhelion.engineering
About
https://www.quadhelion.engineering/about.html
Backup GitHub
Backup BitBucket
https://bitbucket.org/quadhelion-engineering/workspace/repositories/
deleted by creator
The Internet can be a really mean place, thank you for the kind words.
Grsecurity stopped providing their kernel patches for free years ago. The alpine grsec patches are years old – like before spectre/meltdown. Don’t use them. Just use hardenedbsd/netbsd/openbsd.
You sound like a buddy of mine from high school. Great guy, I’d love to see what he’s up to now, but last I heard it was super secret, like he’s trying to build his own kernel and he doesn’t want anyone to copy him, I guess.
Anyways, ELI5? Any good reason I should use your system instead of Debian 12 and normal hardening practices? You talk about “Linuxification” like it’s a bad thing, can you expand on that idea? Most people use PCs for gaming or media purposes, how do you address that issue?
Also his (so far unsupported) shots against Mozilla. How does that help in a world where >90% of the Desktop world is still dominated by Microsoft and web and mobil by Google products?
Ok, color me intrigued. I’ve got some general questions
- What is your stance on Universal Design as it applies to ethical engineering?
- Also, your site indicates you’re a fan of >1 level thinking. What risks have you anticipated in developing/providing these resources?
- Also, Is there any thinking around how you might measure or address bias in data and source selection, or engineering decisions?
Thank you for taking the time to build and share this. I’ve dabbled in the BSDs from time to time and use TrueNAS as my storage solution at home.
solution that wipes the extremely profitable, For-Profit, Mozilla Corporation off your Internet
Mozilla should be removed from the entire internet but hey, it’s a beginning.
