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posted by on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the using-linux-is-not-a-crime dept.

Linux Mint terrorist Samata Ullah has been jailed for eight years by Cardiff Crown Court.

Ullah, as we reported on Friday, was caught with, among other things, a USB cufflink loaded with a copy of the Linux distro.

The former insurance worker pleaded guilty to five terrorism charges, including being a member of Islamic State and two charges of possessing terrorist material.

Vice's Motherboard offshoot had a look round his "basic Wordpress" blog aimed at promoting Islamic State propaganda. They noted that police investigators seized more than 6.1 terabytes of data from his Cardiff home.

Pronunciation tip: the 'll' in 'Ullah' is a voiceless lateral fricative.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:35PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:35PM (#504328)

    Oh my god, any Google search.

    Here, this is three months old:

    https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/linux_desktop_versus_windows10/attachments/slides/1730/export/events/attachments/linux_desktop_versus_windows10/slides/1730/fosdem_linux_desktop_security.pdf [fosdem.org]

    Mint still does not implement ASLR protection, no SELinux (or any of the other MAC utilities), FIREWALL DISABLED BY DEFAULT, Mono installed by default, they didn't even have signed packages or https on their website until after being hacked several times in 2016. And then they downplayed the hack claiming it was just one day, even though evidence shows that their site was rooted way back in 2015 and went that way for several months without the devs noticing.

    Mint is security through obscurity. I'm glad that you found it, glad that you just figured out that there is more than just the OS your computer came with, now grow up and use something other than Mint. I was 12 once too, and I moved on.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:00PM (3 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:00PM (#504344)

    I like how your only link given as evidence doesn't even mention Mint. Try again. This PowerPoint is about Ubuntu (which admittedly is upstream from Mint, but still).

    So let's rewrite everything in Rust or other memory
    safe languages?

    Heh. I recall arguments about this before around here.

    At least you picked a decent-looking source. I was expecting to look it up and promptly find this was one of those open source organizations that has Microsoft on its board.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:03PM (1 child)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:03PM (#504347)

      This PowerPoint is also very Betteridge-y. I guess it kind of makes sense if it's a presentation aide for talking to a bunch of people at a conference about it, but e.g. your claim that Mint (again not actually the subject of the article) is more insecure than Windows is one of the aforementioned bulletpoints with a question mark.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:50PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:50PM (#504432) Journal

      FWIW, the last time I checked Mint came in two versions, one based around Ubuntu, the other based around Debian. I didn't like it because it was slow compared to either of the distros it was based around and didn't investigate further. This might have been a temporary problem.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:16PM (#504410)

    Mint is a DESKTOP distro. A lot of effort was placed into ease of use and feature stability not security. You're comparing apples to oranges. The aforementioned holding back of newer versions of packages is nothing new especially for desktop distros since Desktop Environments can be version temperamental. Unless you're using a 'rolling' release distro like Arch or Gentoo, you're always going to be on slightly older versions of packages. SELinux and it's fellows causes nightmares for DEs. Firewalls on by default would stop user's shiny electronic gadgets from magically appearing as well as interfere with SMB/CIFS/NFS sharing and mounting. And so they where late on the digitally signed packages bandwagon, cry me a river.

    It's designed for the end user, the "I use whatever came with my computer and I just expect it to just work" user. For this purpose it does great and still is MORE secure than anything MS can spit out. For the powerful yet simple reason that if I take the time to look under the hood, I will see a vehicle made from (somewhat) standardized and (somewhat) well documented parts that I can service and replace myself if I'm so brave. Don't want zeroconf or avahi? disable it! bluetooth? byebye! Rip out PulseAudio! Switch to lilo instead of grub! It won't be "mint" Mint anymore but you can still do it. Hell, you can take a HD from one Mint (Linux actually but we're on Mint) system, put it into another computer with completely dissimilar hardware (it's gotta be PC compatible duh), run a few setup commands, maybe install a different kernel or video card drivers and it will boot. Try doing that with Windows. BSOD at worst or licencing fail at best.

    I am not by any means a Mint fanboy. It has it's problems as any distro does, even LFS if you are THAT brave. I use Mint on systems I intend to use as a desktop/laptop where others would just use Windows. I use other distros for servers.

    Oh and thanks for assuming that security always trumps usability and that half of my years of computer experience was my age. Way to make a constructive argument.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:44PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:44PM (#504424)

    Security is in how you use it. I seriously doubt that the arrested radical with 6.1TB of data to seize (what is he storing, pornographic training videos?) was doing anything securely, but at least Mint doesn't "pry" into your potentially secure practices the way a commercial OS might.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]