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UK Gov't Experts Say Linux is Secure, Windows Not
Sara Chan writes "An expert at the British government's computer security headquarters, CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group) has endorsed Linux along with the open source model for software development as the most secure computer architecture available. CESG is the sister organisation of the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), which is roughly the British equivalent of the American NSA (National Security Agency). There is also a warning against "a competing commercial product with hidden source code." For details, see the
ZDNet UK story."
First of all, this wasn't some organization promoting this view -- it was just an individual. Now, he's called an expert, but it's silly not to look at that with some perspective. Such as all the "military experts" telling us that Operation Desert Storm better bring a lot of body bags because the Iraqi Republican Guard was so brutal. We all know how this turned out. Or, the "societal experts" telling us how welfare reform in the U.S. would destroy the lower classes. Again, this didn't happen. In both cases, the experts' position was often affected by personal biases: people against the Persian Gulf war in the former case, and big-government proponents in the latter. When you look at what Mr. Troughton says, I think it's pretty clear that he's a GNU/Linux advocate through and through, and that it's likely that his Linux endorsement stems from that.
The most blatent evidence of his bias was the quote, "Linux is as secure as you can make a computer." Honestly now, do even Linux advocates here believe that? Even if you think that Linux is the best OS out there (because of a combination of its various strengths), I don't think any rational person would even try to put forth that argument. This is the main reason why I think he's a Linux fan who's trying to promote it by saying that it's the most secure OS, as opposed to someone who became a Linux fan because he found it to be the most secure OS.
Secondly, he made other quotes that made him sound like your good ol'-fashioned OS advocate. Namely, that Alan Cox is the best programmer on Earth, and "I've heard he writes code like Richard Stallman." I'm not saying that Mr. Cox is or isn't the best, but these statements sound less like they came from a dispassionate seeker of the most secure OS and more like your garden variety GNU/Linux-advocating name-dropper. Basically, the only thing that was missing was to hear him say, "Linus r00lz."
In other words, I'd take Mr. Troughton's words with an extremely large grain of salt.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I'm glad to see the free software/open source concept being recognized like this, but I think it would have been nice if these experts had taken the time to look at other alternatives. I mean, sure Linux is probably more secure than NT, but OpenBSD is way more secure than most Linux distributions (I'm talking about DEFAULT setups here), so declaring Linux to be the most secure open system available is a bit of a crock.