On 05 October 2015, Xinuos™, a leading provider of UNIX-based operating systems has announced funding for the HardenedBSD project’s efforts to develop security enhancements for FreeBSD. Xinuos has contributed half of the $7,000 fundraising goal for hardware updates, hosting requirements and investigation into the formation of a not-for-profit.
The HardenedBSD project was created in 2014 by Oliver Pinter and Shawn Webb to continuously add security hardening features to FreeBSD, the open source operating system powering some of the world’s busiest services including Netflix, OKCupid and WhatsApp. Over the past year, HardenedBSD has implemented a number of advanced exploit mitigation technologies and security hardening features which were subsequently submitted upstream to FreeBSD.
“We are excited about the work we’re doing for this widely used operating system,” said Shawn Webb, HardenedBSD co-founder. “The contribution from Xinuos goes a long way toward developing new features.”
The HardenedBSD project started with the development of the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) feature which helps prevent attackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in FreeBSD by making it hard for them to find vulnerabilities within memory. Other work includes SEGVGUARD, mprotect and pageexec hardening and procfs/linprocfs hardening to further block attacks on FreeBSD systems.
The project hopes to raise $7,000 by the end of 2015 to purchase new hard drives, web site hosting and begin work to form a not-for-profit organization. In September, Xinuos contributed $3,500 toward this goal as part of their commitment to the FreeBSD community.
“There couldn’t be a better time for this project and the security enhancements they’re looking to develop for FreeBSD,” said Sean Snyder, Xinuos president and chief executive officer. “We look forward to seeing the innovative work that continues to come from the HardenedBSD project.”
About Xinuos, Inc.
Xinuos provides commercial customers with operating systems that are reliable, dependable and secure for mission-critical applications that demand rock-solid performance. The Xinuos general-purpose operating systems are on pace with hardware and software industry advances and are designed to power any size business that requires stability, reliability and scalability. Learn more at www.xinuos.com.
Xinuos Media Contact
Rosie Hausler Phone +1 (425) 301-6740 Email rosie.hausler@soundcmo.com Internet http://www.xinuos.com
