The good thing about LINUX is that a sufficiently motivated person CAN make a change to the OS to correct a security risk, on their own.
But the concept of an OS as a monolithic block is wrong: there are multiple programs, multiple modules, all likely written by different entities, often not even from the same decade. And the vast majority of programmers, even for drivers and OS components, have very little understanding of security and risks.
China cracks down on wi-fi in public spaces
That just means the everyday user is not motivated enough. which, of course, is as it should be.ScottL wrote:I just don't see the everyday user ever doing this though and I don't blame them, this is a ridiculous request for an everyday user.WizWom wrote:The good thing about LINUX is that a sufficiently motivated person CAN make a change to the OS to correct a security risk, on their own.
Wandering Kernel of Happiness
And when someone with the motivation and skill finds such a bug, they can share the fix. Part of using free software is that you don't have to put all your trust on the central developer. Even if you can't check yourself, the major packages tend to be checked by many independent parties.WizWom wrote:The good thing about LINUX is that a sufficiently motivated person CAN make a change to the OS to correct a security risk, on their own.
The theory boils down to the phrase, "With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow." With enough people checking, finding (and, hopefully, fixing) problems gets very easy.hanelyp wrote:And when someone with the motivation and skill finds such a bug, they can share the fix. Part of using free software is that you don't have to put all your trust on the central developer. Even if you can't check yourself, the major packages tend to be checked by many independent parties.WizWom wrote:The good thing about LINUX is that a sufficiently motivated person CAN make a change to the OS to correct a security risk, on their own.
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palladin9479
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Was referring to the system architecture, not the creators of the code behind said architecture.WizWom wrote:The good thing about LINUX is that a sufficiently motivated person CAN make a change to the OS to correct a security risk, on their own.
But the concept of an OS as a monolithic block is wrong: there are multiple programs, multiple modules, all likely written by different entities, often not even from the same decade. And the vast majority of programmers, even for drivers and OS components, have very little understanding of security and risks.
Linux use's a single monolithic kernel. It allows dynamic modules to be loaded / unloaded, this is essentially the same as "drivers" inside the NT kernel.
Contract this to QNX RTOS which the kernel just controls access to memory, process scheduling and IPC. Drivers are just regular programs given special HW access (only to the HW their built for, a FS driver could never write to memory owned by the network driver nor could it read or write to the network adapter or its buffers) but still run outside of kernel space.
Its more of a conceptual thing, use a generic kernel that just acts as a glorified message router. Pro is that it's extremely modular and secure, Con is that it suffers a performance penalty due to drivers and programs being force to communicate through IPC and the associated security checks involved.
@krenshala
Haha, that's funny. Essentially its the nature of the beast, the mere fact that a system talks to anything at all creates a security flaw that may be exploited.
Linux B-day celebrations rattled by break-in
Just days after celebrations marking the 20th birthday of Linux, the operating system revered around the globe as a rock-solid open source triumph, news surfaced that key servers used to maintain and distribute the operating system were hacked. Malware had gained root access. System software had been modified.