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Torvalds Wants Attackers To Join Linux Before They Turn To the "Dark Side" (eweek.com)

Posted by msmash on from the dispatch dept.

darthcamaro writes: People attack Linux everyday and Linus Torvalds is impressed by many of them. Speaking at the Open Source Summit in LA, Torvalds said he wants to seek out those that would attack Linux and get them to help improve Linux, before they turn to the 'dark side.' "There are smart people doing bad things, I wish they were on our side and they could help us," Torvalds said. "Where I want us to go, is to get as many smart people as we can before they turn to the dark side. We would improve security that way and get those that are interested in security to come to us, before they attack us," he added.

49 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Admirable goal, but... by thegreatbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unfortunately, it's far easier to destroy and harm than it is to create and improve... I doubt there are many among us who haven't derived some kind of pleasure from breaking something at some point in their lives.

    This does not, however, mean we should not try. Also no reason to completely write off the dark-side folks, sometimes they see the light and come around.

    --
    There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
    1. Re:Admirable goal, but... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

      Also no reason to completely write off the dark-side folks, sometimes they see the light and come around.

      And sometimes they just cut your hand off using a saber made of "light".

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Admirable goal, but... by Jason+Levine · · Score: 3

      There are also a lot of "Dark Side" folks who have no real talent of their own. They can run scripts written by talented people and can cause a lot of damage, but if given the chance to break into a system without their pre-written scripts, wouldn't get very far.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    3. Re:Admirable goal, but... by shanen · · Score: 1

      You [thegreatbob] stole my Subject: line! I shall now join the Dark Side and destroy you and all your Linux minions! Little disappointed you didn't do more with the angle, which probably won't prevent you from receiving some so-called insightful mods on today's Slashdot.

      Actually, I wanted to approach the topic from the angle of possible solutions. However, if you remember me, you know I already think I have all the solutions, and in this case it's a better financial model for Linux. If you have the money to HIRE these attackers for good purposes, then you don't have to just ask them to be good boys and girls. Asking nicely and offering money just tends to work better than asking nicely alone.

      As the ancient joke goes, DAUPR. You don't need to offer me money to motivate my effort. Just convince me you're sincerely interested in making the world better. Even nicer if you can convince me you're capable of doing something constructive along such lines.

      We now return you to the regularly scheduled meaningless sniping, bickering, and pointless sarcasm of today's Slashdot. Your only prayer is that someone comes up with an actually funny comment or joke that somehow gets moderated properly. I'd wager that this comment will get troll-modded into invisibility ASAP.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    4. Re:Admirable goal, but... by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, it's far easier to destroy and harm than it is to create and improve... I doubt there are many among us who haven't derived some kind of pleasure from breaking something at some point in their lives. This does not, however, mean we should not try. Also no reason to completely write off the dark-side folks, sometimes they see the light and come around.

      Lol....there are two very distinct mindsets - those that create, and those that destroy. Programmers/Engineers are good at the creating mindset while black/white hats are good at the destruction mindsets. It's usually hard for someone of one mindset to switch to the other - not impossible, but hard to do. And honestly we need both mindsets - which is really what Torvalds is gunning for; because if you only have people that know how to create something then it will be full of security holes.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    5. Re:Admirable goal, but... by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

      I have failed us for the last time... for some reason, I was not fully in a Star Wars frame of mind when writing it xD

      --
      There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
    6. Re:Admirable goal, but... by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

      Very true, insight much appreciated. Brings to mind a lot of older software, which was programmed under the mindset that people would only use it for its intended purpose, and that malicious actors basically don't exist... I guess it's a matter of achieving a useful balance.

      --
      There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
    7. Re: Admirable goal, but... by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      And yet you post this to every Linux related article.

    8. Re:Admirable goal, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      what purists should learn is that people get paid not for talent or programming skill but for solving problems. I own a business and it is great to have very talented people working for me but the people who get the highest pay (best reviews) are those who solve problems fast and move on. It is actually not useful to have someone re-invent the wheel just because they are talented or the wheel is close fit but not quite to what is required so start from scratch.
      If someone will adapt the requirements or the solution to match the requirements it is quicker and therefore more profitable.
      You get rewarded for what you achieve not how you achieve it. Even if an engineer when and found people in India to do his job and paid them part of his salary in my mind he should be promoted as he knows the how to produce outputs rather than worry about tinkering with how things work.
      My first test for any code is 1. Does it do the job. 2. robust 3 maintainable. If it cannot pass 1 it does not matter about 2 and 3.

    9. Re:Admirable goal, but... by epyT-R · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ..and what business owners must learn is that the best people who solve their problems are creative problem solvers that cannot be managed and metric'd like factory workers. Good engineers treated this way migrate to competitors who understand this.

      'How' it's done is important too because it determines what's possible in the future. Half-assed 'right now' solutions often end up costing more money down the road. Shortsighted management like this has cost companies way more money than the occasionally overengineered solution (which was probably done in an attempt to avoid this 'firehouse' style management). A lot of this fits under #2 on your list, but also one and three as well.

    10. Re:Admirable goal, but... by billybiro · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, in today's world, it's far more profitable to destroy and harm than it is to create and improve...

      FTFY. And therein lies the rub. So long as it's it's both easier and more profitable to do the wrong thing than the right thing, more people will do the wrong thing.

    11. Re:Admirable goal, but... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      It's more rewarding to produce a system that is difficult to break. Breaking a sandcastle is fun, but building a sand castle that can't be broken is even more fun. When it is eventually broken, you learn from your mistake in lack of creativity.

    12. Re: Admirable goal, but... by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      If so parent AC lost 100% of the battle.

    13. Re:Admirable goal, but... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      At first I felt the same about what he said about "how it's done" not mattering, but I thought about it and later assumed he meant "an action, in and of itself, does not matter, it's choosing the right action". Kind of a cargo-cult take on what they may have meant.

      But..."knows the how to produce outputs rather than worry about tinkering with how things work" is a very dangerous thing indeed. If you don't know how something works, how can you even possibly know you did the correct thing? It's logically impossible. I deal day-in-and-out with people who made solution to mask the problem, not fix the problem, because they didn't take the time to "tinker' and figure out how something works. Rewarding people with getting immediate results over doing something correctly is how technical debt skyrockets. It just externalizes the costs into the future and for other people.

      I deal with managers who tell me technical debt can be good if managed correctly because it allows you to do something sooner. My argument is that is correct, if you properly measure the debt, but most of the time they're not taking out mortgages and flipping houses, they're taking out pay-day loans on money-pits. That week they saved on a month long project set us back 2 months and tens of man-years of work in less than a half a year's time.

      My personal take on problem solving is if you don't know how something should work and how it does work, then you have no idea what you're doing and you're just throwing crap at the wall and hoping it sticks. Same thing goes for how something doesn't work. How something works is the complement set of how something doesn't work. By definition, if you know one, you must know the other. Most of the time that something fails and I ask why it's failing, the programmer has no idea why it's failing. By my definition, if they don't know why it's failing, they could not have known how it works in the first place. If they don't know how it works, then they have no idea what they wrote in the first place. Just throwing crap at the wall.

      When my code fails, I nearly always have an immediate theory as to why it's failing and most of the time my theory is perfectly correct or nearly so. Heck. Even when helping other people with their projects and figuring out why their code is not working correctly, my intuited guesses are better than their educated and informed theories. When I make these kinds of mistakes myself, I will fester on my mistake for weeks. I am my own worst critic and I hold myself to a high standard.

    14. Re:Admirable goal, but... by shanen · · Score: 1

      My other response to your comment involves the scale of competition getting out of control. I think the underlying motivation to do evil is a failure to do good. I'm coming from the position that people are basically good, but you can motivate them to go in either direction--and public recognition is a powerful motivator. Because the scope of competition is so large now, people can't "succeed" anymore, so they go the other way, seeking to gain recognition for being bad. A hundred years ago, you might be the fastest runner in your village, and all the people who mattered to you might know it, but if not that, you had plenty of other chances to be the best at something if you wanted to. There weren't that many people in your village to compete against, if competition and recognition is what you wanted. Nowadays the scale of competition is the entire world, and you might be a fast runner, but you're no Usain Bolt. Maybe you can get "famous" by hacking and destroying his website?

      I actually see this as tied to the freedom definition in my sig. However, the version that satisfied the Slashdot criteria is not complete. Here's the full version:

      #1 Freedom = (Meaningful + Justified - Coerced) Choice{~5} (Beer^4 | Speech | Trade)

      The connection involves the magic number 5... There's also a connection to Dunbar's Number, which is usually estimated around 150.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  2. Dark Side by war4peace · · Score: 1

    Why do you think the saying goes "join the Dark Side, we have cookies!"?
    Do you have cookies? Maybe but not the kind they want.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    1. Re:Dark Side by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      If you really want to see how much some people want cookies, you need to see Little Ol' Bosko and the Cannibals. Just remember, this was made back in the '30s, when people's attitudes were different, and don't be too quick to take offense.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    2. Re:Dark Side by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      I was told there would be punch and pie.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    3. Re:Dark Side by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Maybe if someone punched you in the pie...

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  3. I will just go ahead and say it.. by AnthonywC · · Score: 1

    before they start using Windows or Mac.

  4. How about? by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    Can anyone attacking Linux come up with anything better?

    One thing that I think could improve Linux is to utilize more processor privilege levels if the processor supports it to better protect the kernel from crashes due to a bad driver or other code that don't need full privileges.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    1. Re:How about? by mikael · · Score: 1

      The problem in the past was that it required extra context switching between every daemon. Probably programmers would just get around this using shared memory for all the daemons rather than pipes and you are back to square one.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    2. Re: How about? by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      The trade-off between security and stability versus performance. The Linux kernel is a performance solution, but considering all the security risks out there these days ranging from script kiddies to obscure hardware with drivers it's probably time to raise the stakes and pay the performance penalty tax.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  5. NSA Linux, er, SE-Linux not good enough? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

    /sarcasm I'm shocked, shocked I tell you that SE Linux isn't good enough!

    1. Re:NSA Linux, er, SE-Linux not good enough? by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      It's good, and may be good enough for many, but the world is changing - and not for the better - when it comes to nasty surprises. Today you need to build multiple shells to protect your information.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  6. The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Linux community attacks itself far worse than vague "black-hat hackers", Microsoft, SCO, or any other external force ever could hope to do.

    Just look at the immense community disruption that systemd has caused. It's clearly unwanted by a lot of the community, especially the serious users like the developers and administrators who are responsible for running Linux servers and other critical Linux installations. Forcing systemd into Debian tore apart the decades-old community of what was once the most stable, reliable and trusted Linux distro around.

    Then there's GNOME 3, which has also caused a huge schism within the Linux community. It's pretty widely disliked, yet is forced on users as the default desktop environment by a number of the major Linux distros. While GNOME 2 eventually got to a point where it was mostly usable, we shouldn't forget that the GNOME project itself was initially founded for ideological reasons, rather than practical reasons, again splitting the community.

    It doesn't help that Ubuntu had been dabbling with things like Upstart, Unity and Mir for a long while, again splintering the community.

    When harm comes to the Linux community, it's pretty much never some external force that's responsible. It's the Linux community turning on itself in one way or another. It's one set of Linux users attacking some other set of Linux users. The Linux community is its own worst enemy.

    1. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Agreed. Someone forgot to tell Linus that hacks == cash. Few are going to help out him and Pottering out of goodness of their hearts and devalue their zero-day bug bounties. That's goes 2x now that systemd is a standard. With all the systemd security bugs and crashes, it makes me wonder how much undiscovered zero-day is in the wild already.

    2. Re: The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We need to stop Linux-on-Linux violence!

    3. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by gmack · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The Linux community attacks itself far worse than vague "black-hat hackers", Microsoft, SCO, or any other external force ever could hope to do.

      I don't think I've ever seen so much FUD in one post

      Just look at the immense community disruption that systemd has caused. It's clearly unwanted by a lot of the community, especially the serious users like the developers and administrators who are responsible for running Linux servers and other critical Linux installations. Forcing systemd into Debian tore apart the decades-old community of what was once the most stable, reliable and trusted Linux distro around.

      There would not have been a problem if someone hadn't stared a misinformation campaign a full year after Debian had already had an internal debate, weighed the pros and cons and went with systemd. Yes, there were growing pains, but theve all been pretty much ironed out by now and most people who do this for a living don't actually care. The distros who switched, haven't seen any loss of users because of it and life moves on.

      Then there's GNOME 3, which has also caused a huge schism within the Linux community. It's pretty widely disliked, yet is forced on users as the default desktop environment by a number of the major Linux distros. While GNOME 2 eventually got to a point where it was mostly usable, we shouldn't forget that the GNOME project itself was initially founded for ideological reasons, rather than practical reasons, again splitting the community.

      Some people disagreed about how things should be done and spent their OWN time on their own project so what's the problem? Some people preferred KDE and some QT.

      It doesn't help that Ubuntu had been dabbling with things like Upstart, Unity and Mir for a long while, again splintering the community.

      When harm comes to the Linux community, it's pretty much never some external force that's responsible. It's the Linux community turning on itself in one way or another. It's one set of Linux users attacking some other set of Linux users. The Linux community is its own worst enemy.

      Most of that is fine.. Forks are actually a strength and not a weakness. People work on what they want work on and in some cases the forks learn from each other or just fade into obscurity and who are we to say what Shuttleworth is to spend his money on? Don't like it, don't use Ubuntu, it's simple.

    4. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by whh3 · · Score: 1

      This is absolutely, 100% true, but also slightly different than the forms of attacks to which Linus is referring. I think that the attacks you speak of are incredibly destructive and are self-inflicted. External forces (proprietary vendors or otherwise) do cause great harm to the OS community by attacking its reputation for security. They use examples of attacks perpetrated by blackhats to "prove" that OS cannot/does not work. So, your point is valid and so is Linus'. Thank you!

      --
      remove nospam. to email!
    5. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There would not have been a problem if someone hadn't stared a misinformation campaign a full year after Debian had already had an internal debate, weighed the pros and cons and went with systemd. Yes, there were growing pains, but theve all been pretty much ironed out by now and most people who do this for a living don't actually care. The distros who switched, haven't seen any loss of users because of it and life moves on.

      Pretty sure that's not correct, I remember quite a few negative opinions before the decision was made that resemble the current criticism. In any case, if you're replacing a very old and familiar system that's not obviously broken with something new then you can be assured that most of the debate and the arguments will be made by the people who want change. Because you get like 20 years of "we want to replace X11" discussion they can't be arsed to follow and then finally, when the switch to Wayland is happening then you get the "OMG you're breaking X and I need it, stop that". A year later would perhaps be around when the first systemd-based distro version would be released, actually breaking things for users?

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by LoonyLonesome · · Score: 1

      Just look at the immense community disruption that systemd has caused.

      I don't like systemd (like some of the ideas but not how they are implemented), but outside of the Debian vote, I don't think there's been any community distruption other than some heated comments on message boards, and even that has died down due to people being dead tired of the same arguments put against eachother over and over again. All major distros are going with systemd, I believe eventually (perhaps soon if the developers keep screwing up) something better will replace it, meanwhile it is the de facto standard on Linux distros, where is this 'immense disruption' exactly ? When the vast majority choose one direction it's hardly a disruption.

      It's pretty widely disliked

      Anything with which to substantiate this ? As far as DE's go, Gnome seems to be the most widely liked, default in most distros, most themes.

      yet is forced on users as the default desktop environment by a number of the major Linux distros.

      Ah, this again. If your distro supply a DE right-out-of-the-box, then someting has to be the default, when it's not YOUR personal choice, it's suddenly 'forced on you'. Come on, either use a distro which doesn't ship with a default DE, or better yet, one which ships with your particular favorite, vote with your feet.

    7. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by gmack · · Score: 2

      I recall having an absolute panic attack a the thought of Systemd from reading posts here on Slashdot and then going and looking into it myself and discovering it wasn't as bad as it's detractors made it out to be. Also, I think Fedora got to deal with the worst of the teething problems so there was only minor breakage when Systemd hit debian testing. I myself had a 5 minute hang that I eventually tracked down to a configured mount for a drive that I had previously moved. Later versions were more explicit as to what was going on, reducing the confusion and by the time it hit debian stable, it was pretty much rock solid.

      Since a part of my day job actually involves tweaking init scripts, I can tell you that it actually made my life easier

      Really though, I don't get this thing where people need to call themselves graybeards to emphasise their point. When I started using Linux I had to write my modem dialup script by hand and hand build the modelines in the X config, custom compile my kernel etc. I also used to do a ton of hand compiling packages. Now things have changed and life has gotten easier and I find I don't miss having to do everything the hard way (although I still have about 1% of the systems I maintain running custom kernels and only a few hand compiled packages.

    8. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      There would not have been a problem if someone hadn't stared a misinformation campaign a full year after Debian had already had an internal debate, weighed the pros and cons and went with systemd.

      That decision was made without consulting the userbase, which was overwhelmingly against the change. It was the wrong decision for multiple reasons, both technical and political. If the users are clamoring against it, and you do it anyway, you should expect the userbase to leave in droves. Also, literally half the Debian leadership was against the change, and it came down to a tiebreaker. The intelligent thing to do then would have been to table systemd pending addressing of concerns, but that's not what they did because half of them are not that smart.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by gmack · · Score: 1

      The user base was not "overwhelmingly against the change". Most users don't care one way or the other and again, most of the noise on the forums were people misrepresenting systemd's design and goals(ex saying that it was designed for the desktop when it was actually solving problems on severs), posting fake or already solved. or taking some forum post out of context.

      Proof of all of this is the lack of adoption of Deuvian. If developers were so upset they would contribute to that instead of Debian, but they haven't. Take a look at these stats. What do the top four distros hae in common?. They all run systemd. If users were actually upset, they would switch, but most haven't. Instead we have people trying to hijack every single post about Linux by whining about how their feelings are hurt about systemd being adopted no matter how off topic.

      Want to know how the Linux community handles bad ideas? Years ago we had Devfs, people hated it because it wasn't traditional and complained it was badly implemented but in the end, it was adopted with far less discussion than systemd. What did the devs do? They looked, realized that even though the implementation left a lot to be desired it solved some very real wold problems, sat down and created a competing implementation that solved all of the same problems with fewer downsides. Remember bitkeeper? It solved many problems but in the end turned out to be unworkable, did they go back to CVS? NO. Linus himself sat down and started GIT because he couldn't stand the thought of going back to the old way. In the same way, systemd solves very real problems, especially on servers but not just on servers. I'm convinced that if systemd were to be replaced, it would not be a rollback but a redesign of the core systemd functionality, done better.

    10. Re:The Linux community attacks itself the worst. by gmack · · Score: 1

      No matter how many times I proofread....

      "posting fake or already solved" should be "posting fake or already solved bug reports (even if the problem was solved months or even years ago)"

  7. Bah. by gurps_npc · · Score: 1

    Poor argument.

    Listen to the other side: { joke }

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  8. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    But dad...

    SHHH!

    But...

    SHHH!

    ...

    SHHH! That was a preemptive SHHH...

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  9. Re:He is sounding more like the US of A by CustomBuild · · Score: 1

    Linus, I am afraid, is sounding more like the USA, with its [former] relationship with what became the Taliban, even though the spheres of influence are very far apart. Am I alone?

    Yes. Yes you are.

  10. Re:Linus check yourself before you wreck Linux by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

    They moved to BSD a long long time ago.

    According to Mindcraft BSD is supposed to be dead, you prole.

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  11. It's not hard to understand by boudie2 · · Score: 1

    A reasonable person could see that what Torvalds is saying is that instead of doing something illegal which could land a person in jail and ruin their life, that using their skills to contribute to the Linux kernel is a preferred option. Looks good on a resume and could result in a well paying job. What could be more sensible or easy to understand?

  12. Democracy is messy. Relish software freedom. by jbn-o · · Score: 4, Informative

    First off, you're using the word "Linux" as though that were an operating system. Linux is not now and never was an OS, it was and remains an OS kernel. You can't run the software you use as examples if all you have is the Linux kernel. Secondly, democracy is messy. People start projects which other people don't like. But we're all free to start our own projects and include the free software we like. Nobody "forc[ed] systemd into Debian". Debian GNU/Linux decided to include systemd, and for a community that is still going strong you'd never know that Debian had been "tor[n] apart" as you claim.

    Contrary to your way of putting it, the initial work behind GNOME was quite practical and, coming from the GNU Project, started in making free software more practical. GNOME was started because the K Desktop Environment (KDE) had nonfree dependencies, notably Qt which used a nonfree license until around mid-1999. Thus KDE was unsuitable for the GNU Project which aims to provide an OS which respects a user's software freedom (to run, share, modify, and distribute). A second project aiming to do roughly the same job as Qt was also started by the GNU Project (a Qt API-compatible project called "Harmony"). Qt ended up being relicensed as free software and GNOME ended up being useful. So we have both KDE and GNOME today. Thus a pragmatic pursuit of software freedom, which you apparently eschew, was quite effective at delivering a modern GUI look-and-feel for users who want that (which, I'm guessing, would be most computer users).

    "Splintering the community" is a natural outcome of software freedom just as people use their freedom of speech to express different and sometimes conflicting views. People try to work together to meet their needs but sometimes that just isn't possible. This kind of thing happens in science all the time; people with different ideas on how something works set out to investigate their hypotheses in parallel and sometimes we end up with multiple divergent theories and, over time, some convergence. When it comes to software development we should celebrate, not minimize or disdain the software freedom to express ourselves in such a way.

    --
    Digital Citizen
    1. Re:Democracy is messy. Relish software freedom. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      we end up with multiple divergent theories and, over time, some convergence. When it comes to software development we should celebrate, not minimize or disdain the software freedom to express ourselves in such a way.

      Yes, this is why systemd is shit. You have to take it as a lump, it's not modular in practice like Unix software is supposed to be, nor is it interoperable like Unix software is supposed to be.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. FUCK YOU, PAY ME by zachriggle · · Score: 1

    As a long-standing member of the computer security industry, having done vulnerability research my entire career [0], there's exactly two sentiments in the industry:

    1.) This is cool! I'll do this in my free time, it's fun!
    2.) Fuck you, pay me.

    The problem with #1 is that as soon as you hit any real resistance, it stops being fun. Have you tried landing a patch at GNU.org or in the upstream kernel? Biggest pain in the rear, ever.

    The current state of affairs is that you can remain a White Hat and report vulnerabilities to Google in any open source software [1] or even Android specifically [2] and earn TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS PER BUG. You can find even more companies / projects to assist through BugCrowd or HackerOne.

    Alternately, if you don't mind your bugs being sold to any number of nation states, just take your research to Apple iOS, and either Exodus [3] or VUPEN-nee-Zerodium will pay you A MOTHER FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS [4] for the right bugs.

    All of this whining is coming from the same open-source community leader (Torvalds) that has publicly shunned GRSecurity [5] one of the groups that has been trying to help for 20 years, and has stated that infosec industry members should "Please just kill yourself now. The world would be a better place." [6]

    So to you, Mr. Torvalds, I say:

    FUCK YOU, PAY ME.

    [0]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/za...
    [1]: https://www.google.com/about/a...
    [2]: https://www.google.com/about/a...
    [3]: https://rsp.exodusintel.com/
    [4]: https://zerodium.com/program.h...
    [5]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/6/2...
    [6]: https://web.archive.org/web/20...

    1. Re:FUCK YOU, PAY ME by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Ever considered that Torvalds has had a share of less favorable interactions with "security researchers" that has ended really sour?

      If he really had problems with all security researchers then we wouldn't have had SE-Linux. So I have a hard time finding your opinion entirely serious.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:FUCK YOU, PAY ME by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      All of this whining is coming from the same open-source community leader (Torvalds) that has publicly shunned GRSecurity

      Do you mean this grsecurity? Anyway, your characterization is total bullshit. Torvalds is willing to accept grsecurity features piecemeal, but not willing to accept grsecurity as a monolithic patch. The grsecurity team cries about how that's not feasible because they've been developing grsecurity in their free time, but the real problem is that they were developing it in a vacuum. They failed to take the linux kernel project seriously, and now they want people to take grsecurity seriously. They're arrogant, hypocritical fucks who, by the way, are also shit at documentation. If they wanted to enhance Linux security, what they should have done was write decent tools for selinux. That's what it's missing.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  14. I think ... by PPH · · Score: 1

    ... Google has a patent on The Dark Side.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  15. Re:Linus check yourself before you wreck Linux by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    I think it's pretty insightful - systemd is counteracting a lot of the security, stability and determinism that the kernel offers even without SELinux.

    With systemd it's next to impossible to figure out what the problem really is and how to get around it.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  16. Re:Arrogance by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    Torvalds is not being stupid, his goal is to make something that works in a predictable manner supporting as many platforms as possible while maintaining the APIs that are generally known since a long time. This means that a lot of software written as far back as the 70's and 80's works on the Linux platform.

    As for new software built outside the *NIX realm - that's a completely different issue and it's not easy to just change the OS to support them while still maintaining the historical compatibility. What you essentially look for is a different OS capable of offering the "tremendous amount" of software that's not *NIX compatible. At this stage then it's also the question of if that software is running under Windows, MVS, OS400 or VMS. It's possible to run some of those through emulators. But do that have a value? For Windows you may want to look at React OS as an alternative.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.