ProPolice/SSP in 7.0

[Gunther Mayer]

Hi there,

I'm still running 6.2 on various servers without any tweaks (GENERIC
kernel, binary updates via freebsd-update etc.) but lots of ports
(apache, postgresql, diablo-jdk etc.) and would like to use stack
smashing protection in order to harden my boxes and avoid many potential
exploits.

I've known about ProPolice/SSP for a while now (from the Gentoo world)
and am aware that FreeBSD 7.0 doesn't yet support it though I know of
Jeremy Le Hen's patches (http://tataz.chchile.org/~tataz/FreeBSD/SSP/).
Some time after 7.0 is released I'd like to upgrade and apply SSP
throughout kernel, userland and ports while I'm at it. However, being an
unsupported patchset and all, I have some concerns which I'd like some
feedback on well before I embark on this project:

   1. Will FreeBSD ever support SSP natively?
   2. How good is the kernel patch and how many people out there are
      using it?
   3. Does using the kernel and userland patch mean that I am eternally
      stuck to compiling from source if I want to keep SSP on all the
      time (gone are the days of freebsd-update luxury)?
   4. What's the story with libssp? Jeremy reckons that it's a lost
      cause and causes more trouble than it's worth. Yet libssp seems to
      be the only thing that actually fully integrated in 7.0

Gunther