3 ms·
My concern with apps like Shelter, Insular and Island is: who guards the guards? How confident can I be that an xz-type attack hasn’t been made on them? Who a
by eadmund 3y ago
My concern with apps like Shelter, Insular and Island is: who guards the guards? How confident can I be that an xz-type attack hasn’t been made on them? Who are the individuals behind such projects, and what nation-states and influences are they subject to?
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoYou could ask the same questions about Google or Apple or any of the countries that have jurisdiction over them. The best answer is to make the sensitive parts open source. Then anyone can review it themselves if they're so inclined, including you. And since some software developers and large organizations actually do this, it's difficult to get backdoors into popular projects without anybody noticing. Notice that the xz attack was detected before it made it into e.g. Debian Stable or the distributions based on it. The best answer to "who watches the watchers" is everybody. The prerequisite for which is for everybody to be able to see what's going on in the places where there could be something fishy happening.