If you don't own your OS, you don't own your BTC • Hacker News Board

Re: If you don't own your OS, you don't own your BTC

#61

Post by orestarod » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

grifball wrote: post #44

I love FOSS, but there's a lot of problems with the arguments in this article. >"it is highly recommended to run on Free and OpenSource Software...This way, you know exactly what is running on your system" I get this feeling as well: that when I use FOSS I know exactly what my computer is doing. But I don't. Linux is about 14 million lines of code, and that doesn't include your distro. You might be able to cut this d…

Even if you, specifically, cannot check the entirety of the Linux code, at once, right now, the Linux kernel code is open for checking and auditing. Anyone can check what code is written in it, and numerous experts have done so independently. Moreover, every single change in the Linux kernel is incrementally recorded and documented, so every change was audited and evaluated all on its own, when its commit was introduced. Like a blockchain, you can at some degree trust that the code written before you started checking things has been adequately audited by experts, and you can continue the trend from this point onward.

None of this can happen or has happened with Windows. You gotta trust a company firmly shut to the outside world.

Re: If you don't own your OS, you don't own your BTC

#62

Post by perl4ever » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #45

If you don’t trust MacOS or Windows, why would you trust Linux? With the first two, sure, they could “do something bad” to compromise you, but why would they? With Linux, yes, you have access to the source, but can you absolutely guarantee that someone hasn’t “done something bad” to compromise your system? It’s not a matter of idealism, it’s a matter of reality. How long would it take a person of the Posters level of…

Linux has been improved over the years with patches originally developed by the NSA, and what paranoiac wouldn't welcome that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux

Re: If you don't own your OS, you don't own your BTC

#63

Post by bathtub365 » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

hluska wrote: post #60

Nitramevfank wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Is your scenario that the users license to use the OS is revoked combined with there not being any backups? If you store data on a computer without backups you can expect to lose that data. Disks breaks, files are corrupted, computers are stolen, node.js deletes your crap. Or whatever. As for employees embedding stuff in OS code. Sure, that can happen. O…

I’m not the person you’re replying to, but Grifball is talking about BitLocker. BitLocker is a device encryption tool that ships with certain versions of Windows (I think only Pro, but don’t trust that.) I believe that what Grifball is saying is that if your disc was fully encrypted and you lost the ability to decrypt, you’d be in a lot of trouble. In the BitLocker case, if you had a valid Windows license, encrypted…

If your backup requires the original machine to be fully functioning, it's a bad backup. If it requires complete reliance on a third party holding a key, that they have the right and ability to revoke, it's also a bad backup. You're giving them the ability to cryptolock you at a whim.

Re: If you don't own your OS, you don't own your BTC

#64

Post by Nitramevfank » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

hluska wrote: post #60

Nitramevfank wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Is your scenario that the users license to use the OS is revoked combined with there not being any backups? If you store data on a computer without backups you can expect to lose that data. Disks breaks, files are corrupted, computers are stolen, node.js deletes your crap. Or whatever. As for employees embedding stuff in OS code. Sure, that can happen. O…

I’m not the person you’re replying to, but Grifball is talking about BitLocker. BitLocker is a device encryption tool that ships with certain versions of Windows (I think only Pro, but don’t trust that.) I believe that what Grifball is saying is that if your disc was fully encrypted and you lost the ability to decrypt, you’d be in a lot of trouble. In the BitLocker case, if you had a valid Windows license, encrypted…

I know what bitlocker is, I've been using it for years.

> backup wouldn’t be much use if you lost access to BitLocker

Why? What kind of backup are you talking about? This statement makes no sense to me.