Home Messages Index
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index

Re: Who Owns Your Computer?

__/ [ nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] on Friday 05 May 2006 18:29 \__

> "...There's a battle raging on your computer right now -- one that pits
> you against worms and viruses, Trojans, spyware, automatic update
> features and digital rights management technologies. It's the battle to
> determine who owns your computer.
> 
> "You own your computer, of course. You bought it. You paid for it. But
> how much control do you really have over what happens on your machine?
> Technically you might have bought the hardware and software, but you
> have less control over what it's doing behind the scenes...
>
> [... SNIP ...]
>
> "You can fight back against this trend by only using software that
> respects your boundaries. Boycott companies that don't honestly serve
> their customers, that don't disclose their alliances, that treat users
> like marketing assets. Use open-source software -- software created and
> owned by users, with no hidden agendas, no secret alliances and no
> back-room marketing deals."
> 
> http://www.schneier.com/blog/

A better (permanent) link would be:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/who_owns_your_c.html

This ought to prevail for future readers/lurker/errant Web searchers to
follow. It is a good item from Schneier -- the same guy who put forward a
strong and famous argument in:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/linux_security.html

Alluding to:

http://www.honeynet.org/papers/trends/life-linux.pdf

        "Recent data from our honeynet sensor grid reveals that the average life
        expectancy to compromise for an unpatched Linux system has increased from 72
        hours to 3 months. This means that a unpatched Linux system with commonly
        used configurations (such as server builds of RedHat 9.0 or Suse 6.2 ) have
        an online mean life expectancy of 3 months before being successfully
        compromised."

This is much greater than that of Windows systems, which have
average life expectancies on the order of a few minutes.

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index