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Secret Security

Authored by Michael Pate on October 27th, 2003 at 12:04 PM

Reality lies somewhere betw Cringely and Ballmer and Linus. - Dave Winer

1) Linus is responsible for the Linux Kernel. As fas I know, he doesn’t do a GNU/Linux distribution.

2) My favorite distro, Mandrake, always asks me on installation whether I want the servers turned on by default. Dave’s criticisms are better aimed at the distribution providers rather than Linus. If Dave means that Linus should be more of an advocate for security in GNU/Linux distributions, that is a position I can agree with.

3) The main difference I see in Unix-based and Windows-based OS design is that UNIX tends to be modular. If you don’t want to be vulnerable to something, either remove it or disable it. In Windows, vulnerabilities are often unrelated to whatever software is running.

4) I watched Steve Ballmer talk about security the other day. He said a great deal, but didn’t address the core issue to me: Microsoft banks on security through keeping the code secret (and at times in the past, the vulnerability).

It’s simply unrealistic to depend on secrecy for security in computer software. You may be able to keep the exact workings of the program out of general circulation, but can you prevent the code from being reverse-engineered by serious opponents? Probably not. The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets. - Whitfield Diffie

When Microsoft decides to trust me as much as say, China, I will be perfectly willng to trust them.

Links in this entry:

China to view Windows code
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-007
Microsoft's security secret
Reality lies somewhere betw Cringely and Ballmer and Linus.
Risky business: Keeping security a secret
Steve Ballmer defends Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative

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