Guy Fawkes wrote:
>
> "Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> schreef in bericht
> news:1245839.yshsElgC79@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> "Trusted" Computing
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Do you imagine that any US Linux distributor would say no to the
>> | US government if they were requested (politely, of course) to add
>> | a back-door to the binary Linux images shipped as part of their
>> | products ? Who amongst us actually uses the source code so helpfully
>> | given to us on the extra CDs to compile our own version ? With
>> | Windows of course there are already so many back-doors known and
>> | unknown that the US government might not have even bothered to
>> | ask Microsoft, they may have just found their own, ready to
>> | exploit at will. What about Intel or AMD and the microcode on
>> | the processor itself ?
>> `----
>
> With Linux at least you can check (and people DO check, believe me) if
> there are backdoors. With Windows there's no way to know for sure. Even if
> you lucky enough to be able to see the source code of Windows through
> Shared Source you'll only be able to see 70% of it (I keep wondering
> what's in the other 30%!!) and you're not allowed to build it at any time,
> therefore making a binary compare between the build version and the retail
> verion (to see that the binary is actually based on the source code
> provided) impossible.
>
> Ramblings about microcode are nonsense. BIOS would be feasible, though
> (and is being done by various governments and virus writers).
>
For me, the big worry is the BIOS. It's the one last dark place, compressed
and encrypted out of our collective sight, that still bothers the hell out
of me...
If any of the big brandname motherboard factories were to start shipping
their products with LinuxBIOS... they'd have a LOT of new customers
overnight... Hell... even OpenBIOS would be better than the current fare...
--
Jerry McBride
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