4 ms·

Too many people without security clearance can access and modify Linux. In any real security environment, open-source is poison. Period, end of story.

by Endy 10y ago

jjbiotech 10y ago
^ As if any amount of security clearance can erase human fallibility. In any real security environment, humans are poison. Period, end of story. This is not an issue exclusive to open-source.
- 794CD01 10y ago
  Of course not, but it's exacerbated by open source. Humans are indeed poison, which is why it's normal to involve as few humans as possible. Unfortunately AI is not sufficiently advanced so you still need some of them in order to get the job done.
jrowley 10y ago
So security through obscurity?
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Or maybe security through, you know, actual security. Closed source does not mean obscurity–– and open source does not mean clarity (see OpenSSL, that one Linux 2.6 thing¹, etc). It's not like being proprietary suddenly means the only security is through obscurity. Why do you think that? Are you just a zealot? Did you not consider that closed source software could be well-engineered and secure? You're welcome to read about some of the security features in Windows NT² (that article is a bit old but still relevant), which are considerably more thorough than (non-SE)Linux (I think SELinux has auditing now, so it's at least comparable to NT). Now, don't get me wrong, I generally prefer open-source tools (for a variety of reasons) and tend to trust them more, but saying stupid stuff like you are just gives open source a bad name. On top of that, obscurity is a perfectly valid layer of security. To use a mediocre analogy, of course you want your safe to be strong enough that nobody could break in even if it's in plain sight—but it's certainly not a bad idea to hide the safe as well. ¹ https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/ https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/ ² https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsnt/4/workstation/reskit/en-us/security.mspx https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsnt/...
  - jrowley 10y ago
    I wasn't saying it was only secure due to obscurity. I should asked more clearly - "So the idea is to enhance security through obscurity?" For mission critical secure systems, I can see a case being made that software should be closed source, as it allows fewer people to be aware of potential attack vectors. Especially, if you know the software you are creating won't be used externally much or audited.
pjmorris 10y ago
So you trust the black boxes someone sold you?
- PeCaN 10y ago
  The opposite of “open source” isn't “black box”.
  - rifung 10y ago
    Not the person you're replying to but opposite of open source is closed source, and isn't that basically a black box to you since you don't know what it's doing? Is there something more subtle I'm missing?
    - PeCaN 10y ago
      Yes. Microsoft offers source access to Windows. IBM and Oracle will rent you people who know the details of their software. None of those companies' offerings are particularly ‘black box’-y, in spite of being very closed source. ‘Open source’ is more about the development model (and freedoms) than about the nature of ‘knowing what the software is doing’. Heck, I could argue that Linux is a black box to most people who aren't well-versed in kernel development. OpenSSL is notoriously difficult to understand. Sometimes huge bugs look relatively innocent¹ even with people looking at the code. ¹ e.g. https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/ https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/
      - rwallace 10y ago
        At the level of security where you need to be paranoid about the operating system developers, how do you know the source code Microsoft shows you, corresponds to the Windows binaries running on your machines? (Let alone to the sum and total of all binary patches applied thereto?)
        PeCaN 10y ago
        A source license probably also gets you the build system, or if not maybe you could throw more money at them. But reproducible builds are a hard problem, so… honestly, I can't answer that.
jstalin 10y ago
Well, end of story. That's it then. No more discussion can be had!
linkregister 10y ago
This is a falsehood. One of many sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203211 (HN discussion of Snowden using wget to scrape NSA internal sites)

Too many people without security clearance can access and modify Linux. In any real security environment, open-source is poison. Period, end of story.

by Endy 10y ago

Too many people without security clearance can access and modify Linux. In any real security environment, open-source is poison. Period, end of story.

jjbiotech 10y ago

^ As if any amount of security clearance can erase human fallibility. In any real security environment, humans are poison. Period, end of story. This is not an issue exclusive to open-source.

794CD01 10y ago
Of course not, but it's exacerbated by open source. Humans are indeed poison, which is why it's normal to involve as few humans as possible. Unfortunately AI is not sufficiently advanced so you still need some of them in order to get the job done.

jrowley 10y ago

So security through obscurity?

PeCaN 10y ago
Or maybe security through, you know, actual security. Closed source does not mean obscurity–– and open source does not mean clarity (see OpenSSL, that one Linux 2.6 thing¹, etc). It's not like being proprietary suddenly means the only security is through obscurity. Why do you think that? Are you just a zealot? Did you not consider that closed source software could be well-engineered and secure? You're welcome to read about some of the security features in Windows NT² (that article is a bit old but still relevant), which are considerably more thorough than (non-SE)Linux (I think SELinux has auditing now, so it's at least comparable to NT). Now, don't get me wrong, I generally prefer open-source tools (for a variety of reasons) and tend to trust them more, but saying stupid stuff like you are just gives open source a bad name. On top of that, obscurity is a perfectly valid layer of security. To use a mediocre analogy, of course you want your safe to be strong enough that nobody could break in even if it's in plain sight—but it's certainly not a bad idea to hide the safe as well. ¹ https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/ https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/ ² https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsnt/4/workstation/reskit/en-us/security.mspx https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsnt/...
- jrowley 10y ago
  I wasn't saying it was only secure due to obscurity. I should asked more clearly - "So the idea is to enhance security through obscurity?" For mission critical secure systems, I can see a case being made that software should be closed source, as it allows fewer people to be aware of potential attack vectors. Especially, if you know the software you are creating won't be used externally much or audited.

pjmorris 10y ago

So you trust the black boxes someone sold you?

PeCaN 10y ago
The opposite of “open source” isn't “black box”.
- rifung 10y ago
  Not the person you're replying to but opposite of open source is closed source, and isn't that basically a black box to you since you don't know what it's doing? Is there something more subtle I'm missing?
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    Yes. Microsoft offers source access to Windows. IBM and Oracle will rent you people who know the details of their software. None of those companies' offerings are particularly ‘black box’-y, in spite of being very closed source. ‘Open source’ is more about the development model (and freedoms) than about the nature of ‘knowing what the software is doing’. Heck, I could argue that Linux is a black box to most people who aren't well-versed in kernel development. OpenSSL is notoriously difficult to understand. Sometimes huge bugs look relatively innocent¹ even with people looking at the code. ¹ e.g. https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/ https://lwn.net/Articles/341773/
    - rwallace 10y ago
      At the level of security where you need to be paranoid about the operating system developers, how do you know the source code Microsoft shows you, corresponds to the Windows binaries running on your machines? (Let alone to the sum and total of all binary patches applied thereto?)
      - PeCaN 10y ago
        A source license probably also gets you the build system, or if not maybe you could throw more money at them. But reproducible builds are a hard problem, so… honestly, I can't answer that.

jstalin 10y ago

Well, end of story. That's it then. No more discussion can be had!

linkregister 10y ago

This is a falsehood. One of many sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203211 (HN discussion of Snowden using wget to scrape NSA internal sites)