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While that may be true, it no one should expect to be backdoored by using a proprietary product.
by Johnny555 9y ago
While that may be true, it no one should expect to be backdoored by using a proprietary product.
- craftyguy 9y agoI (strongly) disagree. You should expect the worst when using crap that you, or anyone else (publicly) cannot verify. To expect any less is to become complacent. Products, and companies behind them, must earn your trust, and hiding behind binary blobs is not the way.
- btgeekboy 9y agoYour parent post is talking about expectations. You are talking about reality. Just as everyone should have access to clean water and medical care, but that’s not actually true.
- craftyguy 9y agoIf you don't have access to clean water, you should publicly object. If you don't know how to determine if you have clean water (e.g. the parent comment), then either you demand proof or expect, uh, dynsentery and a bad time. You should not assume you have clean water.
- djsumdog 9y agoI mean yes, you or I might just get an ITX board or a Pi and run our own Linux on it to setup a NAS, but most of the average users aren't going to do that, mostly because they don't have the knowledge or expertise, or because they don't have the time. Vendors with names people trust should be held accountable when they fuck up like this. Also you can't trust everything all the way down. A Pi still has proprietary video chips, every Intel and AMD board has some kind of management software, etc. etc. There is no way for one human being to be all Tony Stark and build literally everything from the ground up.
- borplk 9y agoNot everyone is a leet open source enthusiast lisp-loving kernel-compiling hacker. People go to the shop down the block, pick a product from the shelf and they are done with it. This doesn't make them deserving of backdoors. "Bought the wrong brand of car ... you had that accident coming" "Visited the wrong doctor ... you had it coming" "Ate food at the wrong restaurant ... had it coming" Not everyone is going to be an expert in every field. This is not how a modern society works.
- nickik 9y agoWhile I agree with you. You can just buy a product with Open Source software. Those exists but not for every possible product you might want. That said, for Hardware this does not yet work, and firmware is of course another problem. Lets hope for a better future.
- f2n 9y agoQuite the opposite, actually: Everyone should expect to be backdoored by proprietary products if they use them, and take appropriate security measures.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoReally? I'd have thought the exact opposite, based on the number of backdoors discovered in devices like these.
- Digital-Citizen 9y agoYes, and for good reason: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-back-doors.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-back-doors.html has a list of some of the backdoors found in proprietary software (software users are not free to run, inspect, share, and modify). https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ has a list of other kinds of malware found in proprietary software sorted by type and company or type of product. It's very informative reading and touches on issues which often come up on sites like Hacker News.