General question about hardened kernel.

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 777 Location: Tokyo, Japan

I was looking at running the hardened kernel or SE-Linux on my laptop for security/peace of mind. But, I looked at the FAQ's and Wiki and kind of get the sense that there isn't any real security benefit to an average laptop/desktop user such as myself. It seems more geared to server security. Is that a correct conclusion?

Also, in the FAQ I see they list SELinux-sources as an option but I don't see it in portage. I do see hardened sources but it isn't in the FAQ and the wiki says it isn't officially supported by Gentoo?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2014 9:50 am Post subject:

Budoka,

Security is like the layers of an onion

You want to keep attackers out.
Limit the damage if they do get in
Stop them phoning home to advertise that your system is compromised.

To determine what security you want, you need to determine what threats you want to defend against.

hardened sources is just a piece of the security available on Gentoo.

The idea is to make random attackers go and attack another system before they get into yours.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.