Posted on 12/15/2010 11:59:49 AM PST by LibWhacker
A former government contractor says that the FBI installed a number of back doors into the encryption software used by the OpenBSD operating system.
The allegations were made public Tuesday by Theo de Raadt, the lead developer in the OpenBSD project. DeRaadt posted an e-mail sent by the former contractor, Gregory Perry, so that the matter could be publicly scrutinized.
"The mail came in privately from a person I have not talked to for nearly 10 years," he wrote in his a posting to an OpenBSD discussion list. "I refuse to become part of such a conspiracy, and will not be talking to Gregory Perry about this. Therefore I am making it public."
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
Linux does not use this code.
We only know of this because of its open source nature. Do you have any guesses as to the presence of any back doors in Windows? They'll only be guesses, because Microsoft sure isn't going to tell you. Remember "NSAKEY"?
You're not really refuting anything I said: all you're really saying, is that open source is no better than closed source.
No, I'm saying that in open source, anyone can inspect the code and make their results public. These people are not bound by NDA, paycheck, laws or other restriction to the company or originating country. With closed source you have to trust the company, that's it. That does make open source superior in this respect.
I use Xubuntu on my laptop with an encrypted home folder and a strong password. My expectation is that this will keep my data private.
How valid is my expectation?
Pretty good, but it has nothing to do with this IPSEC issue unless you communicate using IPSEC tunnels.
Thanks again!
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