This blog post by

OpenBSD and FreeBSD are both great OS that I admire and use. OpenBSD is considered more secure since it is its main goal, but FreeBSD can be tweaked to be pretty well hardened as well. Depending on the forums or to who we ask, we will have different opinions. But what are the facts? Which OS is more secure and why?

I am not asking the question about which one is globally better, as “better” has a different meaning depending on the context and the needs (ISP routers, data base servers, home gateway, desktop system, storage server or appliance, etc…). On some enterprises doing a major OS upgrade every 6 months or every year is doable, on others, it’s not possible at all. Also, it depends if one needs performance for streaming (Netflix), or if security is a top priority for a redondant firewall. Everyone needs is different, and both OS are highly useful.

If we strictly focus on security, how FreeBSD compares to OpenBSD security wise? In what follows, we will dig into memory protection, system and network security features, and default “out of the box” security. The purpose is to give unbiased facts, to compare point by point both OS. I am not trying to find the “best” OS and discredit the other, I love and use both :-) Let us try to find out the integrated security features of both OS, the visit continues below!