Posts by fg_swe 1478 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Nov 2021
He was running a tight ship while he was alive. He surely knew how to assemble great technologies and technologists. A great attention to detail, while capable of seeing the big picture*. A giant businessman in the best sense.
All while being a total a$$ relative to his daughter, before you accuse me of worshipping.
*seeing the smartphone before Nokia could see it.
The most expensive thing that can happen to a government agency is to lose sensitive data to a competing government.
For details, you can ask Karl Dönitz and Isoroku Yamamoto.
Windows must be banned from processing any secret government information, as they are at least 20 years behind the state of the art.
Let me repeat this: there are probably tens of thousands of highly experienced Linux software engineers in the U.S. alone. Some of them work for the big Linux companies such as Redhat, Oracle, HPE. Many more work for smaller consultancies and many are self-employed.
A lot of them have all the clearances the government needs. Many more are eligible. Your fear-spreading about this aspect is baseless.
The government are idiots when they give more than 30% of their business to a single supplier. Instead, they should have serious Apple, Google Chrome and Linux seat populations. The data center should be a healthy mix of LInux, BSDs, commercial Unix, Windows Server and mainframes.
I have seen the internals of Deutsche Börse, which can easily compete with most government agencies in terms of computing power. Their Linux based trading system works very nicely. So does Google Chrome, Google Search, Facebook and many other large scale cloud systems.
You are simply a paid MSFT propagandist. I can see that from all the talking points you bring up.
Let me shatter just one argument: IBM/Redhat surely has a sufficient number of employees with government/DOD clearance. The cleared ones can reach out to many top class kernel engineers inside Redhat to fix any issue.
https://ubuntu.com/support
https://www.suse.com/solutions/business-critical-linux/
https://www.credativ.de/open-source-support-center/
https://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_support/europe/
There are plenty of commercial support companies around. Thousands of highly skilled Linux consultants in addition to that.
No, there is a different reason for the lack of love of open source software. It does not look as polished as Windows and Office. Looks are completely deceiving though, almost inversely proportional to actual security.
A single hostile VBA script running inside MS Office can do huge damage:
-encrypt all C files of user(despite having no business in programming)
-steal all CATIA drawings (despite having no business in mechanical engineering)
-forward all VHDL files on user's network drive to Ivan Hackov in Irkutsk(despite not being an EDA tool)
Etc.
MS Office is a first order security risk ! Uninstall it !
U.S.G. and everybody else must BUY ALTERNATIVES. Only when MSFT loses serious marketshare, they will become honest.
+Apple and its strong App sandboxing as opposed to no sandboxing on Windows
+Apple office
+AppArmor and Linux
+FreeBSD
+Memory Safe Rust, Sappeur, Swift for applications
+SBZ compact command line as opposed to SSH bloat(150 000 loc) https://github.com/DiplIngFrankGerlach/SBZ_git
+DeltaChat GNUpg secured instant messaging instead of Teams, WA, Telegram or Zoom bloat
+LibreOffice
+Stop VBA scripts at the firewall. They are not sandboxed and can reconnoiter the entire user account. All files, all database connections...
Go for the IT Airbus. Based on Linux, BSD and other FOSS, but nicely polished. Fully DSGVO compatible. No covert recon bugs, but transparent Lawful Intercept*
DeltaChat as the messenger
Italian design, German manufacturing quality, Swedish GUI library, British CPU,...
Will cost just as much as an Apple, because there is no slave labour in Europe. Still only 1/10th of what a car costs.
*add the national police agency as a further recipient in any GNUpg message.
0.) Stop using Outlook and Exchange. They cannot even secure it when they run it themselves.
1.) Linux Email Server, On Premise in a DMZ
2.) DeltaChat Messenger, doing GNUpg End2End encryption via 1.
https://delta.chat/de/
3.) Contract with actually competent Linux Administrators to perform any change and maintenance. The local LUG can give you leads for this. Hourly rates from 80 to 300 USD, depending on location. Less than you pay for a lawyer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_user_group
Three points about these rumtime memory checkers:
1.) Very valuable tools for finding memory errors during debug and testing time.
2.) Slowing down the program by a factor of 100. Too slow for most productive use cases. Sappeur and Java slow down by a factor of three. (e.g. https://github.com/DiplIngFrankGerlach/SieveOfEratosthenes)
3.) Do not find the memory bugs triggered by an attacker's Specially Crafted Input. Unlike Sappeur, Rust, Java, Go.
You definitely read too many newspapers with their sociology babble of "generation Z", "generation Baby Boomer" etc.
Suckers are born every day and always have been. But then and now, at a constant rate, Musks and Gausses are born.
Just read the NYT as the Russians read PRAWDA and after some time you can find a little bit of genius in your own honest thoughts.
Been there, done that.
If you think about it, the damage done by a nicely debuggable core file is much less than undetected memory cancer. Or Undetected Program Subversion By Cybernetic Attacker.
In some applications such as realtime control of cars, airplanes, rockets a software crash might be fatal. But even in those cases, a memory safe language will stop your system inside the V-Shaped development methodology. If you have sufficient test cases, that is. Plus you will use various static test techniques (e.g. PC Lint or SPARK Ada) to find as many bugs as possible early. In some cases, even more static checking is required.
The key point is that memory safety will find the bug when it occurs, instead of silenty soldiering on and then Failing Mysteriously three minutes later.
In any non-trivial system, there is No Such Thing As Exhaustive Testing.
An attacker will analyse your code and find an "evil test case" which you have not yet in your test battery. He will proceed to develop the programming error into an exploit. Memory safe, strongly typed languages neuter 70% of CVE bugs. Those who are related to undefined memory errors in C and C++ programs.
There exist many industrial-strength, high quality Java based systems. Heavily used in finance, accounting, logistics, airlines and other commercial data processing.#
Also, lots of C and C++ developers use the Java-based Eclipse IDE. It's almost the standard in C++ development on Linux. Not perfect, but the others are worse.
Even the most experienced developers with the nicest requirements documents, the nicest design documents etc will produce implementation errors then and now. 70% of those errors can be caught by Memory Safe Languages. That means 70% of exploits do not work.
See http://sappeur.di-fg.de/Sappeur_Cyber_Security.pdf
Mr Stroustrup already made some incorrect claims. Unfortunately he wants to portray C++ as both super high runtime-efficient and memory safe at the same time.
It is easy to demonstrate why this is almost impossible.
He would have a greater posture if he claimed just the first property.
Cobol programs perform tax, banking, accounting and other critical stuff. Stuff that affects millions of people.
We do not want a 99,9%( due to AI phantasizing) correct version of these programs. Rather, we want a 100% correct translation using proven, robust compiler technology. The translated programs will look quite cobolish, but all new code can be rust-style, go-style, sappeur-style etc.
Even highly experienced, intelligent and cunning software engineers will have bugs in their code then and now. Valgrind and checkers such as PC Lint are demonstrating this. So do plenty of CVE exploits in Linux, Windows, Apache or VxWorks.
Memory Safety is an additional layer of safety and security. Just like ABS brakes help even the most experienced drivers.
Composite words are much more efficient than using a latin or greek one.
Also, they can be very precise.
KinderGarten
SchubKarre
MähDrescher (CutThresher)
FlugZeug (FlyThing)
FahrZeug (DriveThing)
AusPuff (where the Puff comes out of the car)
Of course the technique can be abused and perverted. The goal should be three or two words concatenated.
SpreizSpektrumFunkGerät is already questionable.
