At 12:08 PM 10/25/2007 -0400, Stuart VanZee wrote:
The reason that people are going to #2 is that, if you are concerned about
security, that is the optimal way of setting things up. One box, one
task. That is true "separation". In this light, the question of if #3 is
more secure than #1 is truely a moot point. BUT.... To argue that a
VM running a service is more secure than a system running that same service
is rather weak... if the service can be exploited, it can be exploited.
No, you need to read the last two discussion replies - they, at least, make
sense.
Isolating ONE part of the discussion just posts extra traffic on the list.
Give me root access to a box (from an exploit or an account, don't matter)
and I can crash the bitch.
Very true, but is completely offtopic from the OP, but, then, that has been
forgotten long ago. I think everybody can agree that issues within a VM
configuration can significantly ADD security risks, *especially* if you're
running an OS that are not secure by default.
The original discussion of VMs providing security for an application
domain, however (per the summary posted about an hour ago), has nothing to
do with this level of vulnerability. Providing separation of application
domains in an enterprise adds an excellent level of security for the
application users and admins. The fact that VM systems compound
vulnerabilities, though very significant, is not an issue related to the
OP. The fact that running those application domain on separate hardware to
provide better security is also a option, but, again, not related to the
OP. The fact that OBSD does not operate in that enterprise space, choosing,
instead, to focus on core services, is again, not related to the OP.
All of these tangential discussions have added a lot of good information to
the list archives, thanks to all!
Lee
