FreeBSD could be used for hacking?

Hacking is an activity, just like writing an email. It can be practised on any kind of platform, including FreeBSD.
Also, hacking is not synonymous to doing damage. It means mostly changing a system to do things that it was not designed to do.
Just like a car can be used for robbing a bank, hacking can be used to do damage, but it can be used for constructive and quite legal purposes as well.

And last remark, some people insist on calling the OS you mentioned "GNU/Linux". Linux is just the kernel part.
 
roccobaroccoSC
It means mostly changing a system to do things that it was not designed to do.
As I understand, FreeBSD is used mostly in servers. Sometimes for make a new OS, or fork. What if I do what you say and modify it for what I want? In other words: how much versatile is?
 
What if I do what you say and modify it for what I want? In other words: how much versatile is?
You have access to the complete source code for the whole OS. You can change anything and everything. What more versatility would you need?

But most Linux distributions used for hacking are tools. Does it really matter if a hammer is made by company A or company B? It's still a hammer you use to hit nails with. Linux, FreeBSD or even Windows are just tools to get the job done.
 
It is right. But I heard that FreeBSD has around of 9 millions of line of code. I think I can only modify a few. More lines will take more time and energy inverted on it.
 
But I heard that FreeBSD has around of 9 millions of line of code.
I have no idea if that's correct or not. But keep in mind that FreeBSD is a complete OS. Linux is essentially only a kernel. Distributions use that kernel and add a bunch of other stuff (typically from the GNU project) to create something that resembles an OS.
 
I already know that FBSD is a complete OS. And a one very robust. In fact...I will say what I have in mind to do with this system: you had seen before a RTOS? Well, I am planning to one of those. I am not very familiar with programming, I test systems to see what they are about. But since a few months, a idea came to my mind. That idea was: what if I make a system resistant at damage? A system that will continue functioning with no matter what occur: you could throw the motherboard to a wall, shoot it, even bur it. And it will continue working. Even when I have most knowing of GNU/Linux, I think FreeBSD has its own potential. Or perhaps make a mix of both. I am learning C, C++, and assembler language.
So, according to the fact that most of hackers do something new, I will make something new. Of course it will take a long time, because I never learned none language before. Just learn a few of PHP and Java, whose could not be used for something like this.
 
A system that will continue functioning with no matter what occur: you could throw the motherboard to a wall, shoot it, even bur it. And it will continue working.
This actually has very little to do with the OS. This is mostly hardware design. And costs are going to be your limiting factor. It's easy enough to design a system like that but it's probably going to cost about 10 times the current price of regular mainboard.

Note that a lot of enterprise server hardware is, to a certain extent, already built like this. ECC RAM, hot-spare CPUs, dual disk controllers, dual power supply, dual/quad network connections, etc. All done in a way that a failure of a single component doesn't result in a catastrophic failure of the entire system.
 
Sorry, my bad. I forgot to explain that I will use FreeBSD on the aspect of soft. You mentioned that GNU/Linux is a kernel independent of the programs. It is right. Do you think that GNU tools will be compatible with BSD? Although the compatibility will be a low-level.
 
I don't understand.
If FreeBSD is designed basically for server, this is the same thing for Linux, this kind of debate is useless... and what does exactly mean "server" ?
You can run a server on a Raspberry pi...

I first thought that "hacking" meant using an OS to develop web attacks...", any OS can be used to hack.
But reading the exchanges, the meaning of "hacking" changes and if I understand well.... you mean "hacking" in the way customizing an OS.

Everybody know that Linux distros are out of the box OSes. This means that this is much easy to setup BUT THIS ALSO MEANS that it is harder to hack.
If you hack your Linux distros, you may break various things, and for example you can break the update process.
Out of the box means... you accept standard packages, this is the contrary of hacking.

On the other side, FreeBSD IS NOT an out of the box OS, this means that it is much more difficult to setup BECAUSE users have greater liberty to setup their system as they want.
So FreeBSD IS BY DESIGN the system you can hack. Most people using FreeBSD use FreeBSD because of "FreeBSD port system" where anyone define his own building options.

FreeBSD is not designed only for big servers, this is FALSE. FreeBSD can be modified, hacked in various way to create embedded system for various appliances, as FreeBSD can run big servers.

If you want to use Linux in embedded systems, you must use special lightweight distros, you can't use Ubuntu which is designed for desktop and heavy servers.

In fact FreeBSD is closer to "linux from scratch" than Ubuntu...

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

With FreeBSD there is no "systemd", and today "systemd" is known to be a obstacle for users who want to "hack" their systems.

OpenBSD is a security oriented OS, and I would say that it is more "big server / desktop" oriented.
FreeBSD and NetBSD remain the most full versatil BSD systems.
Today, if you want to hack, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux from scratch are the best solutions

With Linux from scratch you build your own Linux distro. For example you can discard "systemd" and use SystemV or any other alternative....

With FreeBSD you can build custom kernels, you can build custom worlds.... the only thing.... it will require some skills. Doing such things is not given to everybody... or you must take the time to learn.
 
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you had seen before a RTOS?

RTOSes are 99% of cases purpose designed OSes, there is no general purpose RTOS (unless you are a talking about soft real-time) and also there are reasons for that. The closer you will get from a general purpose hard real-time OS is VxWorks.

Just curious, why do you want a RTOS? Are you aware they are slower since all times should always match - I mean, no preemption at all?
 
Just because I can...

Your original question is about "cracking", not "hacking". Hacking is for bending software to do their bidding. Cracking is for breaking into things where one should not be. All crackers are hackers but not all hackers are crackers.

One can be proud to be a hacker. One should hide themselves and not announce they are a cracker.

This error in interpretation came about by the uninformed "news" media, reddit, and other misinformed hobbyists.
 
The debate about what is the right and wrong interpretation of the word "hacker" predates the web-based internet; I remember participating in that discussion in the days when usenet and uucp ruled. The original version of the what today has become the "hacker's dictionary" was the jargon file of the 70s and 80s, which used to be downloadable on arpanet sites.

The the OPs question: If you want to build a system that is resilient to damage, the best approach is probably to read about the Tandem servers, and understand their design philosophy, architecture, and implementation. There is a whole series of good papers out there, from the 70s and 80s; search the web for "Tandem Nonstop", or search at the wikipedia page for "Tandem Computers".

Focussing on hacking "a few lines of code out of 9 million" is unlikely to get results. To get a resilient system, you start by understanding requirements, then architecting the system around the requirements. Once you have that architecture, you will find that the choice of OS is the least of your problems.
 
roccobaroccoSC As I understand, FreeBSD is used mostly in servers. Sometimes for make a new OS, or fork. What if I do what you say and modify it for what I want? In other words: how much versatile is?
I am not aware of the statistics about the usage. I use FreeBSD for storage, for routing and as a workstation. But you could do anything with it, it's not only a server OS.
As a matter of fact, it's just as workstation friendly as any other OS, because the graphics server Xorg and all kinds of GUI software runs on it.
For most purposes it's more than enough. And if you have some uncovered use case, you could patch it because the source is public. Building the OS is very easy and well documented. Also, building from source is baked in the cake by default, which is not always the case with other OS-es.
 
I already know that FBSD is a complete OS. And a one very robust. In fact...I will say what I have in mind to do with this system: you had seen before a RTOS? Well, I am planning to one of those. I am not very familiar with programming, I test systems to see what they are about. But since a few months, a idea came to my mind. That idea was: what if I make a system resistant at damage? A system that will continue functioning with no matter what occur: you could throw the motherboard to a wall, shoot it, even bur it. And it will continue working. Even when I have most knowing of GNU/Linux, I think FreeBSD has its own potential. Or perhaps make a mix of both. I am learning C, C++, and assembler language.
So, according to the fact that most of hackers do something new, I will make something new. Of course it will take a long time, because I never learned none language before. Just learn a few of PHP and Java, whose could not be used for something like this.

Modifying (instead of hacking) FreeBSD is quite delicate and potentially breaking. TrueOS is a popular (and respectable) Mod of FreeBSD. This Mod includes a bare-bone kernel, a base system and a truckload of scripts to customize it. As far as I understand, the devs have not really modified the FreeBSD kernel and base code.

If you are looking for a RTOS, you should maybe look at NetBSD instead. They have a bottom up approach at modifying their OS (as opposed as the top down approach of FreeBSD).

At my company, we are using FreeBSD for our servers and workstations as well as ChromeOS for the non-technical staff.

I personally use OpenBSD for my laptop because of X and flexibility.
 
I am not thinking of doing damage to other people. Just a question that came to my mind when I saw that there are Linux distros used for hacking, but find nothing about the BSD.
Using FreeBSD is hacking. Sometimes a port it's outdated or not maintained so you had to get your "hands dirty" and fix things or some software you want to use it's not on FreeBSD ports, you have to somehow make it run on FreeBSD, that it's hacking! If your question it's about software which can be installed on FreeBSD like that which exist on GNU/Linux for pentesting & co. you'll have to search on ports such software or if you ask for a pentesting "distribution" based on FreeBSD, it does not exist.
 
But most Linux distributions used for hacking are tools. Does it really matter if a hammer is made by company A or company B? It's still a hammer you use to hit nails with. Linux, FreeBSD or even Windows are just tools to get the job done.

Many of those same tools are in the ports tree. More precisely programs to automate the task. There is even one to hack FreeBSD, though that's not as easily done now as previously thought.

I used to write XHTML and CSS for a small group of web designers. I was the only one who could write it, the rest all used programs like PhotoShop to make these box style things the Guy in charge thought was the cat's meow in web design. I did all the real work.

I got fed up with him and said a monkey could do what they did by pressing buttons, that I was the only one who could do it by hand and yanked my material off his server before he knew I was gone.

if you ask for a pentesting "distribution" based on FreeBSD, it does not exist.

It used to, it was called Frenzy. I have a live disk somewhere from years ago.
 
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Sorry if I not answered your questions, but it's too late and in a few time I'll go to bed. Tomorrow I'll ask you what I mean. Thanks for the replies, I'll read the projects and articles that you've linked. My eyes are burning like fire.
Edit: I think it will alike a FBSD with jails, or so.
 
Well. I think I'm with more energy right now, so I'll try to ask what I mean by "hacking": part of both. You see...in part I want to customize, but at a deep level. I want to use this OS in embedded systems: they must take care about at least one or more aspects of a complex machine. I don't know if you saw cyborgs or big machines. Something alike. For example, one of the artifacts inside the machine will inform about the temperature, another see the pression, and so on. The machine (or cyborg) will move two arms. It will remove earth like a shovel. The machine will be something alike a excavator.
 
A big part of learning is doing. Take stuff apart and put it back together again. Break things, then try to fix it again. Nobody became an expert "hacker" overnight.
 
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