Dutch Government Officially Trusts OpenVPN-NL 53
First time accepted submitter joost.bijl writes "Yesterday the Dutch government took a step to further improve the adoption of Open Source in its ranks. It has officialy approved a modified version of the open source VPN software OpenVPN for use on the governmental level 'Departementaal Vertrouwelijk' (Restricted). The release is called OpenVPN-NL and is fully open-source and available for use. The software has undergone a security evaluation by the Dutch government's national communications security agency (NLNCSA). The major change is the removal of OpenSSL as the cryptographic core of OpenVPN-NL. Instead, the Dutch government opted to include the smaller, better readable and documented open source library PolarSSL to provide the cryptographic and SSL/TLS functionality. The Dutch IT Security company Fox-IT worked together with both OpenVPN and PolarSSL communities and modified the stock software to support the government evaluation process. In total 8000 lines of code and 4000 lines of documentation were checked in to the OpenVPN trunk."
Why should we trust openssl? (Score:2, Insightful)
Dutch government does not trust openssl?!
Why should we trust it?
I have an OpenVPN link that's been up ten years! (Score:5, Insightful)
When VPN routers were hard to find I set up several OpenVPN links. Over the years most of those networks migrated to other VPN solutions but this one never changed and it always worked. Meanwhile I had to dick with the other solutions all the damn time. When the client with that old OpenVPN link wanted another link I took a good hard look at it. I never had to reconfigure it. I never had to reboot it. It was installed on two HP desktop mini-towers that the client gave to me. And I realized just how good that product was. So I used OpenVPN for the two new links, too. But I upgraded to version 2 and used Centos. That one has been up for two months and everyone is pleased as punch. I'm about to take the old one out of service and install a newer machine running version 2. I'm sure they'll last another ten years.
Holland has made a wise decision to support OpenVPN!
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Hear, hear.
Speaking of lightweight, I have it running on my WRT54GL wireless router (TomatoVPN firmware) and it works without a hitch. Even with the dinky 200MHz CPU in the router, the limiting factor is the upstream bandwidth of the network connection.
I particularly like the fact that it uses widely-tested methods for the secure connection (TLS, certificate-based authentication, etc.), rather than depending on some proprietary system.
Now, if only the Windows GUI client didn't need admin rights to open...
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
It's great to see my government do something sensible related to IT. Most of the time they really truly suck at it (like almost every other government, I suspect). Surely you remember the Diginotar debacle? We've got tons more like that.