"It's not safe to run an internet facing Windows box right now," a hacker who used to work in the US Department of Defense said to Motherboard.
I'm thinking this could be a good time to introduce your friends to #Linux.
I wrote a bit on why over on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/65gnkm/this_could_be_a_good_time_to_talk_to_your_friends/
@forteller from an exploit mitigation perspective, the main Linux distributions trail behind Windows. With grsecurity making their patch private, all distributions will fall behind. When it comes down to it, Windows is likely more secure than stock Linux. It's simply that Windows has a larger market share on the desktop. If Linux had that same market share, you'd see it be targeted more.
@lattera If Linux had a larger market share then there would be more eyes and resources on finding and fixing security holes too. Just think what could be done if say 5-10 countries switched all their administrative PCs in government, police, healthcare, etc to Linux and spent all the Win+MS Office license money on making Linux better.
@forteller @lattera @rysiek Not happening.
By which I mean: Any government that can save money on dropping OS costs will not reinvest that into an open-source project. They'll sooner channel that money somewhere else.
For eg, the whole world basically runs on OpenSSL, including all firewall vendors. None of them found Heartbleed before it was too late.
Many eyes doesn't mean they're always looking.
@wogan @forteller @lattera nobody says it means that. But at least they *can* look. It's our choice if we choose to actually use that chance.
And it's up to us, the citizens, to push the governments to Do The Right Thing. Surprise, surprise.
@rysiek @wogan @lattera My greatest fear is software controlling critical systems for peoples life and liberty and for the possibility of whistleblowing, journalism and resisting the state power intentionaly being made say "I can't let you do that" in some cases. In a world where everything is computers that can be the death of freedom.
FOSS can be hacked, but not built to serve others than the users without anyone knowing about it.
@forteller @wogan @lattera Democracy always lives in the cracks of the system. We need to preserve these cracks. FLOSS is a way of doing just that.