TDV explores the hype surrounding Kylin recently. Heike downloaded Kylin and installed it (as a virtual machine). He finds that Kylin is is Linux 2.4 – rather than FreeBSD – as we previously reported:
Kylin 2.1 also has RPM installed so it is probably a Red Hat derived Linux. It has some interesting things installed in the base install like tripwire and webalizer. Apache 2.0.46 is installed but it doesn’t start automatically. The sshd starts at boot and is version 3.6.1p2. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to get updates for Kylin through something like yum or synaptic. In fact, there aren’t any updates posted to the kylin.org.cn website to download even.
THere’s an interesting comment attached to TDV post:
I think the Abolins article explains the origins of this pretty well. I was at the USCC hearing, and the members of the press corps in attendance were already chattering about the possible implications of Kylin as they were walking out. It seemed to me that Gertz blew the very minor Kylin reference way out of proportion, only because it makes for good headlines.I think it’s prudent to not paint Mr. Coleman as some sort of really important “advisor to the government”. He was one of the many witnesses who have appeared in front of the USCC on this issue, that’s all. Mr. Rohozinski was WAY more impressive, I thought, and the buzz afterward was how obvious it was that he knew his stuff.
Keep an eye out for the actual transcript from the hearing. If the USCC follows their normal schedule, the full transcript should be posted at http://www.uscc.gov by about mid-June or so.
FYI, this wasn’t the first USCC hearing on China’s activities on cyber warfare either – the May 20, 2008 hearing was on this subject specifically.