Alioth Project
Alioth Project
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Security Features

The below graphs indicate a rough estimate of the peak performance impact of all proposed systems combined. It is simply the addative combination of all performance measurements done herein, and not a precision measurement.

The red total accounts for the inability of -fomit-frame-pointer to increase the performance of an executable in the prescence of PIC; however, because most of the system is PIC anyway (every shared object, library, and plug-in is PIC), the overhead from PIE is in reality lower (possibly much lower).

Debian SbD
Survey results

Here I periodically post results of the survey (until I can figure out how to make them publicly viewable).

Results as of 12/5/2004 5:00pm EST

  1. How important is security to you? (5 responses) scale: 1-5
    • 4.60 Average
  2. How much more desirable would an OS be with transparent security features than without them? (1 is "Not more desirable") (5 responses) scale: 1-5
    • 4.60 Average
  3. Had you previously heard of PaX? (5 responses)
    • Didn't hear of it: 0
    • Heard of it: 1
    • Learned more here: 0
    • Knew what it did: 1
    • Used it: 3
  4. Had you previously heard of SSP? (5 responses)
    • Didn't hear of it: 1
    • Heard of it: 0
    • Learned more here: 0
    • Knew what it did: 2
    • Used it: 2
  5. Had you previously known about PIE/ET_DYN executables? (5 responses)
    • Didn't hear of it: 1
    • Heard of it: 0
    • Learned more here: 2
    • Knew what it did: 0
    • Used it: 2
  6. Is the overhead of PIE/ET_DYN on i386 prohibitively high? (5 responses)
    • Yes: 1
    • No: 4
  7. Is the overhead of PIE/ET_DYN on amd64 (0-0.02%) prohibitively high? (5 responses)
    • Yes: 0
    • No: 5
  8. Would a Stack Smash Protected base be a desirable quality in a distribution such as Debian? (5 responses)
    • Yes: 4
    • No: 1
  9. Would the option to have Debian-supplied binaries marked for PaX, and an optional pre-built PaX kernel, be a desirable feature of Debian? (5 responses)
    • Yes: 5
    • No: 0
  10. Would other end-user-transparent security features be a desirable quality in a distribution such as Debian? (5 responses)
    • Yes: 5
    • No: 0
  11. Would you like to see more transparent security features in Debian in the future? (5 responses)
    • No: 0
    • Don't care: 0
    • Yes: 0
    • Very yes: 0
    • Strongly yes: 5
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