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Linus's Thoughts on Linux Security (washingtonpost.com)
Rick Zeman writes: The Washington Post has a lengthy article on Linus Torvalds and his thoughts on Linux security. Quoting: "...while Linux is fast, flexible and free, a growing chorus of critics warn that it has security weaknesses that could be fixed but haven't been. Worse, as Internet security has surged as a subject of international concern, Torvalds has engaged in an occasionally profane standoff with experts on the subject. ...
His broader message was this: Security of any system can never be perfect. So it always must be weighed against other priorities — such as speed, flexibility and ease of use — in a series of inherently nuanced trade-offs. This is a process, Torvalds suggested, poorly understood by his critics. 'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"
Of course, contradictory points of view are presented, too: "While I don't think that the Linux kernel has a terrible track record, it's certainly much worse than a lot of people would like it to be," said Matthew Garrett, principal security engineer for CoreOS, a San Francisco company that produces an operating system based on Linux. At a time when research into protecting software has grown increasingly sophisticated, Garrett said, "very little of that research has been incorporated into Linux."
His broader message was this: Security of any system can never be perfect. So it always must be weighed against other priorities — such as speed, flexibility and ease of use — in a series of inherently nuanced trade-offs. This is a process, Torvalds suggested, poorly understood by his critics. 'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"
Of course, contradictory points of view are presented, too: "While I don't think that the Linux kernel has a terrible track record, it's certainly much worse than a lot of people would like it to be," said Matthew Garrett, principal security engineer for CoreOS, a San Francisco company that produces an operating system based on Linux. At a time when research into protecting software has grown increasingly sophisticated, Garrett said, "very little of that research has been incorporated into Linux."
'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"
This nails it entirely on the head, and is why a lot of security and privacy nutters gain so little traction when dealing with the masses. Security and privacy are important, but they need to be balanced pragmatically with what people actually want to do with the system.
On the other hand, OpenBSD is perfect proof that Linus is right: The trade-off is that for the increased security, you suffer in terms of the computer being useful for other things. It's useless for anyone wanting to do 3D modelling and animation for example, or working with video editing.
Exactly this. Windows is insecure as fuck, but people use it because their software runs on it. OpenBSD is probably unbreachable but it's terribly useless as anything but a firewall; to use it as a general OS, you have to turn a lot of its security precautions off. Linux (and by that I mean "GNU/Linux" e.g. RHEL, SUSE, Debian; not Android) gives us a healthy balance between usefulness and security. That's why almost every webserver runs Linux.
Yes, I administer a small network of about 150 bodies and roughly double that number of devices.
I take security seriously.
However, there are trade offs.
For example. I *could* implement a sandbox environment for all apps, do application whitelisting, strip attachments and links from e-mails and a bunch of other stuff... but these things add complexity and reduce productivity as they inevitably run head-on into usability.
As it is, I do everything reasonable to avoid the worst, but security is definitely second fiddle to productivity.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.