Openwall Project
Software distributor
The Openwall Project is a source for various software, including Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl), a security-enhanced Linux distribution designed for servers. Openwall patches and security extensions have been included into many major Linux distributions.
As the name implies, Openwall GNU/*/Linux draws source code and design concepts from numerous sources; most importantly to the project is its usage of the Linux kernel and parts of the GNU userland, and others include the BSDs, such as OpenBSD for its OpenSSH suite and the inspiration behind its own Blowfish-based crypt for password hashing, compatible with the OpenBSD implementation.
01Public domain software
The Openwall project maintains also a list of algorithms and source code which is public domain software.
02Openwall GNU/*/Linux releases
| Openwall Version | Release date | End-of-life date | Kernel version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 0.1 | 13 March 2002 | ? | 2.2.20 |
| Unsupported: 1.0 | 2002-≈≤≥10-15 | 2.2.22 | |
| Unsupported: 1.1 | 23 December 2003 | 2.4.23 | |
| Unsupported: 2.0 | 14 February 2006 | 2.4.32 | |
| Unsupported: 3.0 | 16 December 2010 | 2.6.18 | |
| Latest version: 3.1 | 5 January 2015 | ||
| Legend: Unsupported Supported Latest version Preview version Future version | |||
LWN.net reviewed Openwall Linux 3.0. They wrote:
The first question most people will have is: what is so "security-enhanced" about Owl? Aren't major Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and so on secure? Of course, they continuously patch known security vulnerabilities and some of them (Red Hat in particular) implement security features to decrease the impact of vulnerabilities, but none of them really are focused on preventing vulnerable software from getting into the distribution in the first place.
03PoC||GTFO
Issues of the International Journal of Proof-of-Concept or Get The Fuck Out (PoC||GTFO) are mirrored by the Openwall Project under a samizdat licence. The first issue #00 was published in 2013, issue #02 featured the Chaos Computer Club. Issue #07 in 2015 was a homage for Dr. Dobb's Journal, which could be rendered as .pdf, .zip, .bpg, or .html.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Openwall Project”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Openwall logo.png by Openwall Project, Public domain
- PoC!!GTFO.jpg by Travis Goodspeed, CC BY 2.0
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