Re: just saying
Am 24.11.2022 um 22:03 schrieb mick.crane:
> I love open source, more than you might think, but I have a niggling
> feeling it's been infiltrated to make user control difficult.
> If I was a spook it's what I'd do.
> Please prove me wrong.
> mick
>
>
MeeToo.
When i was still an apprentice coder, i had to obey strict rules. And i
did not. I even wrote a little helper, that allowed me to scramble the
commandline, while someone would watch my doings at a terminal, in order
for them to not understand, what i was actually doing.
And in that way, i managed to overcome the obstacles from so called
secure code and the rules of an employer at the same time.
But i was an "ethical hacker", not doing any harm, not even publishing
my findings, i was only interested in learning (like: in reading OS
source code). That was in the early 80's
Many years later, i had an upcoming desire to be helpful to other
people, and in order to do that, i was interested in more information,
than was officially accessible. So i came back to "hacking techniques",
deliberately giving away good software for free, which would serve me as
a door opener (trojan horse). That was easy as pie.
Even later, when i took responsibility of a big software development
project, i made use of such techniques to analyse the quality of the
software we built. At that time, i was clearly no longer interested to
publish our findings, even our customers never learned about the
infrastructure inside our software, that was left behind, and that was
able to inspect various internals (for the good or the bad).
Today, i am on old geezer, retired, and such. But i recently read from a
FOSS developer, that he even did include obfuscated code parts to check
out, how many people would be able to find the hidden bounty. He
claimed, that it took almost 12 months before anyone even noticed, and
over the course of a decade, only a handful of people (from many 10000's
using his software) got in touch with him about it.
So what i am basically confirming is, yes, it is possible. Almost
certainly is an infrastructure around us, that spies on us. And if i was
mean, i would not even bother with software creation, as there are
cheaper infiltration methods available.
Finally, we live in a complex world, where many things are going on,
that are beyond our personal control. We have to make a deal with trust.
Even eating food can be harmful, which proves, that we do trust at all
times, the air we breathe, the water we drink, when you think about it,
it is even a bit funny, that humanity still survives. ;-)
Insane!
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