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Re: [LUG] OT: MS security whitewash

 

On Mon, 9 Dec 2013, Philip Hudson wrote:
These programs may not technically be part of the OS, but they are more or less tightly integrated with it in the MS style, are they not?

No they are not. Not in a way that access to the company's datacenters gives you access on what is on the computers that run their OS.

Of course, there is a move towards integration of the OS and the cloud, with things like Office 365, which is cloud-based. But seeing as "cloud" means "someone else's computer", if you are worried about anyone accessing your data, you shouldn't store it in the cloud in any format that is not encrypted by you on your own device. It doesn't matter here if it's Bill Gates or Richard Stallman who runs that particular cloud service.

The point about the absolute untrustworthiness of non-free software in general and Microsoft in particular is not only perfectly valid but incontrovertible.

I agree that when it comes to things that really matter open source is extremely important.

I am less sure that the software being free (as in speech) really matters here - at least I can't see why it does.

I do think that the ease with which to discover backdoors (or other security flaws) in open source software is very easily overstated though, especially compared to the difficulty in discovering them in closed source software.

Again, I would support it if the government decided to start using free software. I am not convinced it will make these servers less vulnerable to NSA snooping, but I am not sure it won't make a different either. It might do. But of all the things the government can do to make its data more secure, it is not the most important one. At all. That is do something about the powers of GCHQ.

Martijn.

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