[Discuss] our friend the nsa

Richard Pieri richard.pieri at gmail.com
Thu Sep 19 11:09:40 EDT 2013


Eric Chadbourne wrote:
> It seems, from my little apartment in Quincy, with no data to back this
> up, that it's safe to assume 1 through 3.  4 I don't know about.  I
> _feel_ safe with the kernel.  Gnome and the rest scare me.

I wrote this a while back: security means thinking about worst cases. 
Apply this to point number 4. Not knowing whether or not you can trust a 
thing should be a much greater concern than knowing what you can or 
can't trust.

There are kernel vulnerabilities that on paper can't be exploited but 
become exploitable when SELinux is enabled. The ones I know about have 
been fixed but remember: worst case thinking. There have to be others 
that I don't know about.

Has Linux kernel security been compromised by the NSA? I assume it has 
been, which means I know about how much I can trust it. I could be 
wrong, but remember: worst case thinking.

-- 
Rich P.



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