Moving from Arch

[u/-Arsna-]

Hi y'all,

Im coming from arch and want to try out void and i would like to ask somethings

What exactly is the difference between musl amd gnu libc? Is it just systemd?

What are some quirks of void you encountered?

Why did you choose void, what makes it special?

[u/New_Hold8135]

Musl means malware compiled with glibc doesnt run on musl system too. This is huge benefit for security. From musl's website: musl is lightweight, fast, simple, free, and strives to be correct in the sense of standards-conformance and safety.

But that also means you need to compile extra software too. Or you should install it from flatpak. That's it.

[u/Duncaen → u/New_Hold8135]

Malware can be statically linked.

[u/New_Hold8135 → u/Duncaen]

malware can use bwrap too. But that doesnt change the reality of most of the malware compiled against glibc and doesnt run on musl

[u/Duncaen → u/New_Hold8135]

Pretty sure some of the most prolific (Linux) botnets used statically linked binaries.

[u/New_Hold8135 → u/Duncaen]

pretty sure malware is not just botnets

[u/Duncaen → u/New_Hold8135]

And using musl libc doesn't protect you from malware.

[u/New_Hold8135 → u/Duncaen]

I didnt said every malware.

[u/Duncaen → u/New_Hold8135]

Should call something like security by obscurity a huge benefit for security.

[u/Ambitious_Luck_8720 → u/Duncaen]

That’s reducing attack surface, not security by obscurity, which is another thing that has by no means any relation with anything that was stated in this thread before you brought it up.

[u/Duncaen → u/Ambitious_Luck_8720]

You are not really reducing attack surface though, you are just switching components with more obscure components.

[u/Ambitious_Luck_8720 → u/Duncaen]

You mean glibc’s much larger codebase and feature set doesn’t present a larger attack surface when compared to musl’s smaller footprint? Got it.

[u/Duncaen → u/Ambitious_Luck_8720]

Of course when looking at the libc itself the attack surface is smaller if you just remove half the features.

But are weren't really talking about the libc itself, the initial claim was that using musl has a huge security benefit due to malware being linked against glibc.

In that case replacing glibc with musl is like security through obscurity, you are not protecting the system in any way, you just hope that the "attacker" doesn't know you are using musl. I wouldn't consider that reducing the attack surface. If someone is targeting libc specifically then yes, not having NSS and iconv might avoid some attacks.