OS Security Theory

It's always been a question asked- "What is the most secure OS?"

Some will give a vague shout of "Linux" because they're stupid and don't know what they're talking about. Others will say "OpenBSD" or some other odd thing I've never heard of.

Recently a thought occured to me. Using an OS on ROM, we could have a 100% OS, couldn't we? The kernel and shell would be stored somewhere that they can't be written to, and thus the OS would never be damaged by viruses. Also, the only crashes it would ever experience are ones it was doomed to experience if it had been in storage memory, anyway.

But way- aren't CDs ROM? Why- I think that's why they're called CD-ROMs :D Well then, wouldn't a live cd OS be far more secure than one stored on the hard drive? Imagine if you were running a web server off of a CD or DVD. The worst any malicious hacker could do is damage the files on the hard drive (dynamic data on the website. Perhaps databases of users or polls or forums) but the OS itself and all web-hosting programs would be unharmed.

So then- why is it that people still run servers off of OSes on a partition? Why aren't all servers equipped with a CD drive spinning 24/7?

1. CDs spin slowly.
2. CDs transfer slowly.
3. CD drives wear out with that much usage.
4. Security isn't just about writing to the OS disk.
5. You still have to store data somewhere.
6. Information is still in memory. Applications are still vulnerable.

There's no real point. It's not more secure than a harddisk-based OS.

That, and if it was me, i'd lose the OS disk.

I'm sorry to tell ya… OpenBSD is the most secure OS out there… theres only 1 external exploit found… and OS on a disk has been done? and thousandtoone has some good points :)

Well, at least my ideas got shot down without a ton of flaming XD Thank you for making me feel stupid without making me feel menial =P