Hardened Gentoo Review

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Review of Hardened Gentoo powered by the Slant community.

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Pros

Pro
Supports custom hardened kernels

Your only real options for a widely supported hardened distro are the Red Had distros (Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora) of which Fedora is your best bet for a desktop , or Gentoo. You can make a hardened kernel in Gentoo while stripping unnecessary features, creating a much smaller attack surface, and using in-kernel mitigations others don’t.

Pro
Comprehensive hardened guide in wiki

From SELinux to PaX to AppArmor to.... The wiki has got you covered.

Pro
Fully customized kernel that prevents server-side malwares with SSO mechanisms

Out of CentOS /RedHat/Fedora a hardened kernel is very easy to make.

Pro
Best defense against NOP-sled malwares, even with ROP/COP mechanisms

Out of CentOS/RedHat/Fedora/OpenSUSE/Slackware/FreeBSD/Mandriva and Arch, only Gentoo can best protect you against NOP-sled malwares, even with ROP/COP mechanisms.