Heard of Kylin ?

I had never read anything about it till today,


http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6421

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009...-race-with-us/

Here's one reality I knew:

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"Frankly, I worry more about attacks we can't even see, which the Russians are good at. The Chinese are relentless and don't seem to care about getting caught. And we have seen Chinese network operations inside certain of our electricity grids."

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It felt a little weird when I copy pasted that since I use a Russian antivirus..

It was a rather informative read towards current cyberwarfare situation..


Any thoughts?

http://www.zone-h.org/archive/filter=1/domain=gov.cn

Enought said.

Hmmmm,

Seems that this "cyber warfare" hype is the new gravy train to replace global warming :rolleyes:

China is very vulnerable, particularly given their current dependence on pirated Microsoft software. I think that The-Spec has just demonstrated that?
(all Win 2003 boxes).

It certainly makes sense that they would want their own non-Microsoft OS and that they would want to standardise it. That makes deployment, education and training far easier and more cost effective. The product is basically Free BSD with minimal modification.

My take on this is that it is all about economics and national technological autonomy rather than cyber warfare FUD.

As I posted a few weeks ago, Cuba have already released their own version of FreeBSD called "Nova".

Basically, that's what happens when people are afraid of marginalisation.

As for a "secure OS".................there is no such thing, other than one that won't boot ;)

Any OS is only as secure as its deployment.

If anyone wants to try it you can get it from here:

http://selinuxproject.org/~jmorris/kylin/

None of the Chinese links seem to work.

WOW! .. Zone-H reports completely say a different story.. The article I’ve pointed out clearly states that chine migrated to kylin OS in 2007 for their important servers, either their webserver doesn’t fall under important category or they don’t want people to get more information on the OS and hence didn't deploy it onto public facing servers..

Anyway thanks for the link mate, its a good way to pass time early morning at office.. :) :p

Hi ByTe,

I think that they meant "started to migrate" :)

Given the size of China, and the fact that a large proportion of its IT infrastructure is state controlled, this will obviously take quite some time to roll out.

The Chinese are denying the espionage bit, and I must say that I am inclined to believe them. This is an article in the online version of the People's Daily (English edition):

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90...7/6662406.html

I think that the idea of a "secure OS" comes from them adopting ideas from the SELinux/SEBSD projects. This would make sense for them to grow their economy in the banking, other financial and e-commerce sectors.

I believe that there is now a 3.0 version of Kylin that has some of these features. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a link yet :(

Having worked in the military sector (in the UK) I am inclined to agree with the author of the article that military networks are maintained physically secure, and separate from the internet. Hence, a "secure OS" shouldn't really matter, as hackers (even US military ones) should not be able to get near it anyway.

Commercial interests on the other hand need the internet, so are intrinsically more vulnerable.

This article seems to confirm my thoughts?

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/20...05_328320.html

Greetz.

Johnno, use a chinese based proxy to get the .iso. ;)

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The kernel OS is nothing more than our well known FreeBSD, with linux binary compatibility .
Second, Secure OSs are not something new, if we remember that SE-Linux was also funded by NSA.
Third, a Chinese OS shouldn't be US's main concern on Cyber Warfare...

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Guys cyberwar is about preventing the other guy from communicating, not so much about finding out what he knows. Intelligence gathering is important before the battle.

So China has yet another flavor of Linux. Big deal.

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So China has yet another flavor of Linux. Big deal.

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You miss the point which is that China has its own, government sponsored flavour of *nix. They are not a democracy you know.....................?

I am sure the people in Redmond do think that it is a big deal :D

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Originally Posted by dinowuff

So China has yet another flavor of Linux. Big deal.

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Freebsd != linux :D

Kylin 2.1 is Freebsd 5.3 + linux_base-fc4.

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Freebsd != linux :D

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Only in the ******* my friend.........................:lildevil:

EDIT:

The Chinese do have their own version of Linux based on Red Hat.

http://www.redflag-linux.com/en/download.php

It was/is produced under Chinese (civilian) government sponsorship and funding, but does not seem to be terribly well supported. The last desktop version dates back to 2007.

It did its job though. When the Chinese government ordered its departments to get rid of Windows 2000 and replace it with Red Flag, Gates cut the price of desktop Windows + Office to $7 per seat :D

Any Western government care to try the same?

SELinux isn't an OS, but it does do something with Linux. And that is certainly started by govt here.

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SELinux isn't an OS, but it does do something with Linux. And that is certainly started by govt here.

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It was certainly sponsored by the NSA at one time. As I have always understood it it consists of sort of bolt on or plug in modifications to the kernel?

It is certainly not a distro.

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Originally Posted by nihil

It was certainly sponsored by the NSA at one time. As I have always understood it it consists of sort of bolt on or plug in modifications to the kernel?

It is certainly not a distro.

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Yea, it has a lot of Kernel mods and some other stuff. I used it for the first time on Fedora I think. They have an app that allows a configuration that's pretty quick. SUSE also has a lot of tools for it as well.

Before SELinux SUSE did have a pretty good tool called "SUSE Hardener" which was pretty nice.

SELinux implements MAC (Mandatory Access Control) in the Linux kernel.

For the record, Freebsd 5.3 (on which Kylin is based) also has MAC.