FreeBSD is UP and running on the U.S. Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) 64-bit RISC-V cores. GFE cores are synthesized on the $7000 Xilinx VCU118 unit. Soon all the voting machines in U.S. will be powered by FreeBSD/RISC-V. reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mcnst · 2019-08-25 01:52 What could possibly go wrong?! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BumpitySnook · 2019-08-25 02:45 Cool to see new developments in Risc-V; not sure how that translates into US voting machines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-08-25 03:45 He works for DARPA so I think that's where he's coming from. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-08-25 06:44 Well, if they can port FreeBSD then HardenedBSD too, HardenedBSD would be a better choice for machines that are network facing especially with hostile actors. Unless they plan on running the voting software in a jail, that would be cool too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- qci · 2019-08-25 08:20 What should go wrong? They use FreeBSD on top game consoles already. It's great for these special purpose platforms. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2019-08-25 09:46 Why would you think something would go wrong? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- philthechill · 2019-08-25 12:05 Well having a monoculture implies a single flaw could be used to exploit the entire US voting machine infrastructure. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- qci · 2019-08-25 12:31 The whole idea is flawed. Is this the problem here? I personally think that proper digital signatures by registered citizens could fix the concept. But I fear no one really understands what "proper" means in this context. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- msbic · 2019-08-25 14:55 Would it not be a good use case for OpenBSD? Not sure if it has a RISC-V port... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mcnst · 2019-08-25 17:48 NetBSD supposedly does, but not OpenBSD, from what I could tell. I think it's basically purpose-built hardware at this point. As you can see from the OP, this port is being run not on an actual silicon RISC-V, but on an FPGA simulation; and these FPGAs aren't cheap — I doubt that this 7k unit does better at RISC-V than a 5$ native CPU would do, so, not exactly an OpenBSD forte. Source tree reveals for there to be a QEMU port, too; whereas OpenBSD is all about native hardware. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mcnst · 2019-08-25 19:31 Username checks out! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sootoor · 2019-08-25 22:27 Freebsd lacks a ton of modern exploit protections so that's not my first choice ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MaskedCoward · 2019-08-25 22:32 In order to vote you must provide proof of compliance with the Code of ~~Cuc~~ Conduct. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- qci · 2019-08-26 03:45 Yes, I know. But it's not like a voting machine will have complex input or use internet. There is also much work being done in HardenedBSD and most people use jails (read only system files). There are already many things that can be done. Btw, I wonder too why OpenBSD wasn't used. Maybe because it's Canadian?? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mcnst · 2019-08-26 15:52 Jails isn't really here nor there. The whole data is often in the application. If you can exploit it to take control over it, that's something that could have been prevented if there were exploit- mitigation techniques in place. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 0x3639 · 2019-09-19 12:30 Electronic voting itself is bound to go wrong. If it's a computer it can be hacked.