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An anonymous coward writes "Former cypherpunk shares his conspiratorial view on Linux security:
Since then, more has happened to reveal the true story here, the depth of which surprised even me. The GTK development story and the systemd debate on Debian revealed much corporate pressure being brought to bear in Linux. [...] Some really startling facts about Red Hat came to light. For me the biggest was the fact that the US military is Red Hat's largest customer:
"When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source," General Justice continued. "It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is 'the' single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I'm their largest customer." (2008)
This is pretty much what I had figured. I'm not exactly new to this, and I figured that in some way the military-industrial/corporate/intelligence complex was in control of Red Hat and Linux. [...] But I didn't expect it to be stated so plainly. Any fool should realize that "biggest customer" doesn't mean tallest or widest, it means the most money. In other words, most of Red Hat's money comes from the military and, as a result, they have significant pull in its development. In that respect, the connection between the military and spying agencies, etc. should be obvious.
Next, the FOSDEM: NSA Operation ORCHESTRA Annual Status Report is well worth watching in its entirety (including the Q&A at the end). To me, this turned out to be a road-map detailing how Red Hat is operating on Linux!"
(Score: 1) by frink on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:18AM
That article is far too long. Would somebody mind awfully writing a nice summary for me?
Or was he just pointing out that, oh gee, as things develop they gain functionality and complexity?
(Score: 5, Funny) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:32AM
SGT CAPSLOCK writes in with this new article summary: "Evil mega-corporation named Red Hat (possibly more evil than Haliburton and J.C. Penney combined) only had to be asked once before agreeing to take part in the US Military's secret plot to compromise ALL OF LINUX ..."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by evilviper on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:32AM
Not at all. His position is quite simple really... He is convinced that every time a Linux-related project (KDE, GNOME, udisks2, udev, etc.) makes changes he doesn't like (whether in principle or in practice--he maintains a file manager), it's always part of a massive corporate/government conspiracy. The conspiracy's goal is either to try and backdoor Linux directly, or it's an attempt to frustrate users into switching to Windows or one of Google's platforms, so they can be easily manipulated and exploited there.
That's not a exaggeration.
I gave a lengthier summary over here:0 4 [soylentnews.org]
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=172&cid=33
I know a few people with several different degrees of schizophrenia, and I can say with confidence that he is in-need of medication.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turonah on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:47AM
The author is outlining their past work with cryptography (giving their credentials, really), and what they perceive to be constant and repeated attacks on the security of the Linux core. With everything regarding NSA lately, and the fact that Red Hat's largest customer is the US military, the author is saying that the attempts to compromise the security could be a deliberate move from the government TLAs.
With no proof to back them up, it's all conjecture of course, but then almost every government wants a back door into all secure connections. NSA especially has been connected to this kind of thing before (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/th e_nsa_is_brea.html [schneier.com]). Unlikely? Maybe, but not as far-fetched perhaps as it seems at first glance, IMHO.