5 ms·

How quickly some forget heartbleed. The solution to malware is obscurity. Have an OS that no one wants to break into, and you won't be broken into.

devrandomguy 9y ago
I think you are referring to diversity, not obscurity. Diversity does indeed increase the resilience of the network, but there will always be enough common factors across the board, that diversity alone will not suffice. In the end, the software that we depend on, must be reviewable by anyone who is concerned about it. A prerequisite for that, is that software should be as small, clean, and simple as possible, to encourage such scrutiny. IIRC, the real problem with heartbleed, is that the OpenSSL codebase was a mess, and no-one wanted to work on it.
hackuser 9y ago
> The solution to malware is obscurity. Have an OS that no one wants to break into ... ... and you'll have an OS for which neither malware authors nor legitimate software developers want to write applications. There's a trade-off involved. We could all use pen an paper and be invulnerable to malware, but then how would we post on HN?
- AdeptusAquinas 9y ago
  That's my point, as I type this on fully patched Win 10 Pro. Certainly Windows has its issues, but it's biggest 'flaw' when it comes to malware isn't that it's closed-source, but that it's ubiquitous and therefore a highly attractive target.
  - devrandomguy 9y ago
    Linux is ubiquitous in the data center. We are not a low-value target. Also, corporations with cloud-based infrastructure are more likely to pay large ransoms for their data, especially if it is the backup/archive system that is attacked.
    - AdeptusAquinas 9y ago
      Data centers are dwarfed in size by the consumer and business markets, while also being much less vulnerable due to their more specialised nature and therefore ease of update. Case in point: there are plenty of windows data centres out there, but its not likely any of them were effected by this incident.
edkennedy 9y ago
Quick, migrate to TempleOS!
- qb45 9y ago
  That's rather extreme, I think but Haiku or Windows 98 with IE4 could possibly be quite safe from viruses nowadays, even if not exactly "secure".
dpwm 9y ago
Heartbleed is a very different class of vulnerability -- it allows sensitive information to leak but does not provide root access.

devrandomguy 9y ago

I think you are referring to diversity, not obscurity. Diversity does indeed increase the resilience of the network, but there will always be enough common factors across the board, that diversity alone will not suffice. In the end, the software that we depend on, must be reviewable by anyone who is concerned about it. A prerequisite for that, is that software should be as small, clean, and simple as possible, to encourage such scrutiny. IIRC, the real problem with heartbleed, is that the OpenSSL codebase was a mess, and no-one wanted to work on it.

hackuser 9y ago

> The solution to malware is obscurity. Have an OS that no one wants to break into ... ... and you'll have an OS for which neither malware authors nor legitimate software developers want to write applications. There's a trade-off involved. We could all use pen an paper and be invulnerable to malware, but then how would we post on HN?

AdeptusAquinas 9y ago
That's my point, as I type this on fully patched Win 10 Pro. Certainly Windows has its issues, but it's biggest 'flaw' when it comes to malware isn't that it's closed-source, but that it's ubiquitous and therefore a highly attractive target.
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  Linux is ubiquitous in the data center. We are not a low-value target. Also, corporations with cloud-based infrastructure are more likely to pay large ransoms for their data, especially if it is the backup/archive system that is attacked.
  - AdeptusAquinas 9y ago
    Data centers are dwarfed in size by the consumer and business markets, while also being much less vulnerable due to their more specialised nature and therefore ease of update. Case in point: there are plenty of windows data centres out there, but its not likely any of them were effected by this incident.

edkennedy 9y ago

Quick, migrate to TempleOS!

qb45 9y ago
That's rather extreme, I think but Haiku or Windows 98 with IE4 could possibly be quite safe from viruses nowadays, even if not exactly "secure".

dpwm 9y ago

Heartbleed is a very different class of vulnerability -- it allows sensitive information to leak but does not provide root access.