HardenedBSD

HardenedBSD is a security-focused fork of FreeBSD that aims to provide a hardened operating system for servers and security-conscious deployments. It blends FreeBSD's architecture and ecosystem with additional hardening patches and features designed to reduce the risk of exploitation and improve resilience against attacks.

The project integrates kernel and userland hardening, including stronger memory protection, position-independent executables and libraries, address space layout randomization for processes, non-executable memory regions, and compiler-level hardening. It emphasizes defense-in-depth, with options such as kernel lockdown modes, hardened debugging features, and security-focused default configurations.

HardenedBSD maintains compatibility with FreeBSD's userland toolchain and ports system, enabling continued use of familiar software and workflows while benefiting from enhanced security.

Development and maintenance are community-driven, with releases that align with FreeBSD's release cadence but backport security patches and hardening features. It supports common x86_64 hardware and, where available, other architectures supported by FreeBSD, and provides installation media and packages through its own repositories in addition to FreeBSD's ports tree.

The project is used in environments where security is a primary concern, including servers, embedded devices, and research settings, and it releases advisories and updates in response to identified vulnerabilities.