3 ms·

What's the potential percentage of malware on 100GB (100,000,000,000 bytes) in your system if a backdoor occupies 100 bytes?

kbenson 3y ago
100GB of what? Text documents? Word documents? CSV files? Excel files? Cat videos? Porn videos? Source code from a trusted source? Source code from randos? Games or apps installed from a marketplace? Games or apps installed as downloads directly from random websites? It's like asking what's the chance you'll die from a fall if you live 80 years. The chance is hard to know, but it's probably more likely if you're a free solo rock climber than if you aren't.
- ellis0n 3y ago
  Sure modern Mac/Windows/Linux system files with browser cache. Code+data files after build. This is enough to never find out about those 100 bytes. Not to mention hardware backdoors in chips. Have all trillions of transistors and their schematics in each chip version been checked for possible backdoors in the Verilog compiler? One extra connection can provide root access and cost millions of dollars.
fsflover 3y ago
Not all data on your PC are equally dangerous. The key is to keep Trusted Computing Base as small as possible. See: Qubes OS.
- ellis0n 3y ago
  QubesOS is amazing! I've been working on QubesOS for several years. When it was just starting out, it was a fairly simple solution, but now it's a big software, and it has just as many problems as any Linux distribution. Complexity is the only parameter by which you can determine the amount of malware. For 0 bytes of useful code, there will be 0 backdoors. I also developed ACPU OS for this reason 12 years ago, but later realized that no one would pay for simplicity.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > but now it's a big software, and it has just as many problems as any Linux distribution Could you elaborate? The TCB did not increase since almost the beginning of Qubes. Moreover, the hardware-assisted virtualization by default improved the security a lot. Also, Qubes is not a Linux distribution: https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#is-qubes-just-another-linux-distribution https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#is-qubes-just-another-linux-di...

kbenson 3y ago

100GB of what? Text documents? Word documents? CSV files? Excel files? Cat videos? Porn videos? Source code from a trusted source? Source code from randos? Games or apps installed from a marketplace? Games or apps installed as downloads directly from random websites? It's like asking what's the chance you'll die from a fall if you live 80 years. The chance is hard to know, but it's probably more likely if you're a free solo rock climber than if you aren't.

ellis0n 3y ago
Sure modern Mac/Windows/Linux system files with browser cache. Code+data files after build. This is enough to never find out about those 100 bytes. Not to mention hardware backdoors in chips. Have all trillions of transistors and their schematics in each chip version been checked for possible backdoors in the Verilog compiler? One extra connection can provide root access and cost millions of dollars.

fsflover 3y ago

Not all data on your PC are equally dangerous. The key is to keep Trusted Computing Base as small as possible. See: Qubes OS.

ellis0n 3y ago
QubesOS is amazing! I've been working on QubesOS for several years. When it was just starting out, it was a fairly simple solution, but now it's a big software, and it has just as many problems as any Linux distribution. Complexity is the only parameter by which you can determine the amount of malware. For 0 bytes of useful code, there will be 0 backdoors. I also developed ACPU OS for this reason 12 years ago, but later realized that no one would pay for simplicity.
- fsflover 3y ago
  > but now it's a big software, and it has just as many problems as any Linux distribution Could you elaborate? The TCB did not increase since almost the beginning of Qubes. Moreover, the hardware-assisted virtualization by default improved the security a lot. Also, Qubes is not a Linux distribution: https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#is-qubes-just-another-linux-distribution https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#is-qubes-just-another-linux-di...