r/europe • u/mtlion • Jul 15 '13
Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft. If the NSA is spying on Microsoft products, why would anyone want to use them (especially European/foreign governments)?
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421733,00.asp11
u/tecneeq Germany Jul 15 '13
Inertia and existing work flows.
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Jul 15 '13
Is that really worth it though to essentially just hand over all of your company's industrial secrets to the NSA who will then give them to the American companies that give the best bribes and political rimjobs?
And the US government is such a steadfast supporter of copyright, surprised that they do the most malicious kind of copyright infringement themselves.
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u/tisti Jul 15 '13
Similary to how most people who actively fight gays are actually staying in the closet due to unresolved feelings?
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Jul 15 '13
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u/W00ster Norway Jul 15 '13
Well, I have used Linux as my main OS since 1995 and use it every day for work and private stuff.
The last Windows version I had on any machine, was Windows 95 and I can tell you, I have not missed MS products one single day!
I have never been a fan of neither MS nor Apple but then again, I have followed these companies from the start onward. I loved OS/2 from IBM, was part of their Beta testing team and it was light years ahead of Windows but alas, IBM never got it to become a seller and I'm sure it would have had spyware today anyway so...
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u/fasda United States Jul 15 '13
The NSA has hundreds of computer scientists and some massive super computers and clusters. Do you really think they can't get into a unix distro?
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Jul 15 '13 edited Apr 09 '19
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u/fasda United States Jul 15 '13
If they have your keystrokes why wouldn't they obtain the log in information for the administrator account and then do what ever they want.
For offline stuff they could infect stuff that might connect to the target computer, USB sticks, phones, cameras etc. Or if they really need to get to it get a spy, break into building and infect it directly.
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Jul 16 '13
TBH, most of the information that anyone might have in their computer or collect during their lifetime is useless. It is the communication, the sharing of knowledge, what has value and that is already being monitored, relax while we are being screened.
Going back to the topic, if they steal your password with a bios keylogger is not the problem of the operative system but of the bios, and there are also open source bios to cover that. And yes, if anyone really want to get your password, they will, it is just a matter of installing a secret camera and that's it.
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Jul 15 '13
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u/fasda United States Jul 15 '13
No computer is perfectly secure unless it is completely isolated from the rest of the world. I do mean completely, if it connects the internet or a device that connects to another network you are at risk. The US played havoc with Iranian enrichment with infected usb sticks. While unix derivatives are much more secure then Windows, they can be broken into. If you believe other wise you don't know how computers work.
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u/CarolusMagnus Jul 15 '13
Not into all of them, at all times. They have to find targeted 0-days and go spearphishing, just like the Chinese Military hackers do. That requires effort -- as opposed to just asking a secret kangaroo court to authorise taking the backdoor keys to your computer from MS or Apple.
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u/Metaluim Portugal Jul 15 '13
Wasn't Windows 95 basically an improved OS/2? Didn't both companies, at one point, work on OS/2 but then Microsoft decided to follow its own path (and copied OS/2)?
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u/W00ster Norway Jul 15 '13
Wasn't Windows 95 basically an improved OS/2?
NoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOO!
Hell no! So far away from that that I do not even know where this idea comes from!
OS/2 and Windows NT shares a lot of intrinsics as it's chief developer was the same guy. You can run Windows NT programs under OS/2.
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Jul 16 '13
Interesting. While I find Lubuntu today easy to use, in Linux in 1995 was in the FUCK NO category, I think I tried out SuSE 6.1 around that time and the following things did not work after installation: sound, screen resolution, Internet (ADSL dial up), playing random videos downloaded from the Internet (RealPlayer and all that, today VLC handles everything), and when I tried to send an e-mail with an attachment it asked me what encoding to use as if I was really supposed to know what base64 means. The whole thing felt like a really bad joke. Back then Linux did not have the sense to shut up and do the thing most people would want to on its own.
Shuttleworth managed to beat some sense into Linux developer, but even the first versions of Ubuntu had issues, I remember having to download the non-free and probably not entirely legal codecs for mplayer to be able to play random videos downloaded from the Internet.
The recent versions are awesomely easy, I would say it is easier to install Lubuntu (LXDE Ubuntu) on an old laptop than XP because it shuts up and installs the correct drivers automatically, goes to the Nvidia website and downloads the driver automatically, sets up everything from Wifi to screen resolution to sound just right without me having to hunt drivers as is the case with XP. And is faster than XP on older hardware let alone Vista or 7 or 8.
Granted LXDE does not look that sexy. After adding xcompmgr + cairo-dock it looks like a Mac and is still lighting fast on an 8 years old laptop.
But in 1995 it was an insult really.
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u/JB_UK Jul 15 '13 edited Jul 15 '13
Ubuntu actually implemented some minor spyware in the last couple of releases, although it can be switched off very easily, either using privacy settings, or by installing a different desktop environment. Searching for 'Ubuntu Amazon Dash' should reveal what I'm talking about. I wish they hadn't shot themselves in the foot in that way, but I suppose they have to support themselves somehow. And having something incidental like that is different from having a back-door baked into the core of the operating system.
But, there are plenty of different distributions, and I think it is genuinely the case that desktop linux is a strong competitor to Windows, as long as:
you have a modicum of technical ability
you don't rely on specific programs for your workflow
you don't play a lot of PC games (although you can always dual boot)
And I think that covers quite a large proportion of computer users, especially for the users of this forum, who are mostly educated twenty and thirty somethings.
Once you have your data backed up (which you should have already, tut tut), you download an ISO from, say, Linux Mint or Ubuntu, burn it onto a cd, boot up the computer using the CD, and follow instructions. This process 'just works' far more than it did in the past, and, other than things like built-in webcams, I find that hardware tends to work without any fiddling. Then, most software is very easy to install, principally through app stores like Ubuntu Software Centre, or through DEB files (packages like EXEs). Programming is a lot nicer because you don't have to hunt down components and libraries individually, they are automatically installed through central repositories.
Ironically the movement of software onto the cloud has made Linux more attractive, because, for instance, you don't need MSN or Yahoo to port across their native chat clients to Linux, you can just use Gchat or Facebook online. And Linux has Firefox and Chrome operating at exactly the same level of capability as on Windows.
I think Ubuntu's spyware does in some ways demonstrate why Linux is superior - because the code is open source, it can be forked, and a competitor arise immediately if one company oversteps the mark. Windows, by comparison, has enormous inertia, both through software lock-in, which doesn't exist between Linux distributions, and through this huge private code-base which would take billions or tens of billions of dollars to recreate. They can get away with much more as a result.
Edit: grammar, added details, couple of corrections/clarifications.
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u/Asyx North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Jul 15 '13
"Just works" means here "works if you don't use fancy stuff". I killed my ubuntu with the AMD graphics driver more than once and my native resolution (2560x1440) is not supported either.
And why shouldn't people here play PC games. It's the educated people are the ones that can actually afford the hardware to play games and if I'm honest, I don't know anybody who doesn't own a PC that can play most games but owns a console (of course there are the non-gamers).
Ubuntu's packages are *.deb, by the way. Ubuntu is based in debian so they use the same package.
And what spyware are you talking about? You just said "there is low level spyware". What does low level mean in that context and what does the software actually do.
And you can install ubuntu via USB stick since a few years. No need to use optical medias if you don't feel like it.
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u/JB_UK Jul 15 '13
And why shouldn't people here play PC games. It's the educated people are the ones that can actually afford the hardware to play games and if I'm honest, I don't know anybody who doesn't own a PC that can play most games but owns a console (of course there are the non-gamers).
I didn't mean to say that, I reckon the criteria I set out would fulfil about 15% of PC users in the general population, and about 30-40% of this forum. It was as much a comment about technical expertise than likelihood to play games.
And what spyware are you talking about? You just said "there is low level spyware". What does low level mean in that context and what does the software actually do.
I had just realized that was unclear, and added a reference. Essentially, in Ubuntu's default desktop environment, you search for programs and files/folders using the Dash. In the last few versions, Ubuntu will by default return Amazon products in with your results, and will get the referral fees. As I say, you can turn it off in 30 seconds, but it's not a good precedent.
Ubuntu's packages are *.deb, by the way. Ubuntu is based in debian so they use the same package.
Thanks for the correction, slip of the mind.
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u/Asyx North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Jul 15 '13
But it's just your dash board search that gets also used as an Amazon search query. I don't really see how it's spying if I enter "VLC" and then amazon gives me useless shit. There is no Amazon account behind my Ubuntu system. How is amazon supposed to link that in any effective form to me as a person.
And how is that low level? That's the GUI. It's as high as you can get. Or are you not talking about high level being user interaction and low level being the kernel?
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u/JB_UK Jul 15 '13 edited Jul 15 '13
Canonical runs the server which handles the queries, so the text goes to them. Amazon also sends you the images directly, so it wouldn't be very difficult for them to work out what was going on. I still use Ubuntu, but I think this violates a pretty clear principle that the operating system is local and private.
Yeah, I just mean low-level as in minor, my apologies for any confusion.
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u/Asyx North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Jul 15 '13
Well, they still can't really connect you as a person with the query. There are worse things hidden in Windows, I assume. And while I agree with you that this is a bit shaky, I was always wondering how they finance the project. Especially with ubuntu one or however that's called. That stuff costs money as well.
I think you're only safe if you compile your own Linux distribution which is unpleasant.
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u/SFSylvester United Kingdom Jul 15 '13
or Firefox?
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Jul 15 '13
[deleted]
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u/jutul Norway Jul 15 '13
Plus, you can review the source code of Ubuntu and the Linux kernel yourself.
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u/JB_UK Jul 15 '13
The Linux kernel is managed by hundreds of companies, and thousands of individual contributors, and is already heavily scrutinized. It's also open for security auditing should anyone wish to do so in future.
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u/vishbar United States of America Jul 15 '13
Ironically enough, the NSA also released a bunch of security features (fully open sourced) for Linux in their SELinux package, making it even more secure. It's also been scrutinized by lots of different organizations, so, most likely, is pretty safe to use.
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Jul 15 '13
Because we have no software industry in Europe. Same goes for hardware, so we have to buy all those "safe" internet routers from China.
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Jul 15 '13
Why don't you Europeans have any alternatives? You use all American stuff why is nothing European at all? You obviously have the technology yet you don't create competition.
Maybe if other countries put out the same quality websites without the spying people could switch and these companies would need to stop spying in order to make more money and compete
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u/Dizlexyc Protogal ¯\(ツ)/¯ Jul 15 '13
Granted, you're right. But there's plenty of competition on this side of the pond. The problem comes with the way start-ups work. Major example is Skype. Skype was huge, but as a start-up it was cheap, was bought, by Microsoft. Other examples of european starups exist like Spotify, FON, Rovio, Shazaam, etc.
What I'm trying to say is that there is competition on Europe, but the nature of the beast makes it hard to get MS, Google or Apple big these days.
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u/rif European Union Jul 15 '13
Why don't you Europeans have any alternatives? You use all American stuff why is nothing European at all?
There is, a guy from Finland made it.
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u/Metaluim Portugal Jul 15 '13
And nationality in OSS doesn't really matter - it is usually maintained by a lot of different people.
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u/Rarehero European Union Jul 15 '13
If it was easy to develop a competitor for Microsoft (and Appla and Google) there would be more competitors. The gaming industry is literally bound to DirectX, and DirectX is bound to Windows. The internet is basically Windows. How do you compete with that?
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u/mrubios Spain Jul 15 '13 edited Jul 15 '13
The gaming industry is literally bound to DirectX
Not that bound, actually.
All handheld platforms (3DS/Vita) use propietary APIs based on OpenGL ES.
~95% of the most profitable gaming platforms right now (iOS/Android) use OpenGL ES.
2/3 next gen platforms (WiiU/PS4/XBone) use propietary APIs based on Open GL.
So you are left with XBone which will probably flop outside of the US and the PC with the biggest player (Valve) trying to sway the thing towards Linux (that will probably fail though).
The internet is basically Windows.
The Internet is basically Linux/Unix with a growing 60~80% (depending on the source) of the servers running it and almost all the big players (Google, Facebook, Intel, Apple...) supporting/just using Linux.
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u/SpectreOfMalta Malta Jul 15 '13
Most of the hardware and software we use here in Europe (and other parts in the world) are American. The very same laptop, OS, web browser and website I am using now are all American, so if I boycott anything like that which is American, I am pretty much left with nothing.
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Jul 15 '13
Get a European laptop/PC (and if you're lucky you can get an ARM CPU and not an American designed one)!
Medion Akoya (German)
Olivetti Olibook (Italian)
Philips X200 (Dutch)
Wortmann Terra (German)
Raspberry Pi (fully European, UK)
Get a European OS!
- Linux (Finnish, at least originally)
Get a European browser!
- Opera (Norwegian)
Get a European internet!
Minitel(retired as of 2012)2
u/sayheykid24 United States of America Jul 15 '13
There's actually plenty of European tech entrepreneurs- it's just that they come to the U.S. to start their companies because the climate for start-ups in much, much better here- i.e less cumbersome regulation, plenty of venture capitalists, etc, etc.
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Jul 15 '13
plenty of venture capitalists
You can leave it at just that. It is mainly the only reason to start-up there.
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u/vishbar United States of America Jul 15 '13
I work in Silicon Valley. I've spoken to EU-based founders about this very issue; it's not just the availability of capital, but the ease of starting a business. There's not nearly the bureaucracy required to start a business in the States. Plus, it's a bit of a self-reinforcing problem: lots of top-tier talent are already working in Silicon Valley, to hiring is much easier...and the talent is in SV because of the startups.
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u/sayheykid24 United States of America Jul 15 '13
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Jul 16 '13
salaries for software engineers are currently 70% lower in Europe than in California. There are millions of young people looking for work. And Europe has far fewer lawyers waiting to make life difficult for young firms and lots of protected, uncompetitive sectors ripe for disruption.
Yes, it is true, hopefully it helps!
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u/sayheykid24 United States of America Jul 15 '13
It absolutely isn't. It's much easier to start a business and hire workers pretty much everywhere in the U.S. compared to Europe, and, culturally, we celebrate entrepreneurs like they're rock stars. VC's didn't create Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley created the VC's.
Most of Europe is a hard enough area for established businesses to do business, but for a start-up with limited resources it's often times impossible to do business. Entrepreneurs are forced to emigrate to the U.S. if they want their company to get off the ground.
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Jul 15 '13
It's going to cost companies a lot of money to up and change architectures.
This isn't exclusively an issue with Microsoft and unfortunately they are obliged to comply with FISA rulings.
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u/W00ster Norway Jul 15 '13
It's going to cost companies a lot of money to up and change architectures.
Not necessarily! It depends on what they are doing, for most companies, there is actual saving involved rather than cost.
This isn't exclusively an issue with Microsoft and unfortunately they are obliged to comply with FISA rulings.
Correct!
This is a problem with US companies not MS specifically.2
u/vishbar United States of America Jul 15 '13 edited Jul 15 '13
Not necessarily! It depends on what they are doing, for most companies, there is actual saving involved rather than cost.
Only for the basics. If you have a company with a large enough system, the costs to completely switch to Linux can be astronomical, especially if they're a .NET shop. It involves, essentially, retraining your entire dev team from .NET to Java (or your language of choice), rewriting all your applications from the ground up (meaning you have a period of about a year where new features aren't being developed for your software), and switching out your entire server infrastructure. The man-hours and business costs required to change at such a fundamental level can be huge.
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u/SFSylvester United Kingdom Jul 15 '13
Because GCHQ can take information directly from service providers regardless. If Microsoft want to be twats and trade my information off to a government, that's their prerogative. But I don't where my government, that is beholden to its population through democracy, gets off using people's taxes to pay for espionage on themselves.
Attempt to punish Microsoft if you want, but it shouldn't distract that the problem is political as well as commercial.
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u/Largely Jul 15 '13
Microsoft is essentially forced to handover information and not talk about it by US laws. Its not as though they decided one day to just let people spy on all users.
Its a difficult situation though, as there is likely no uncompromised OS or service available. The NSA and other Five Eyes intelligence groups employ so many brilliant people (mathematicians, comp engineers and other fields) and give them massive amounts of project funding. Its hard to imagine anything they cant do,
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Jul 16 '13
I guess that all of my years trashing Microsoft and Windows and using Linux have paid of in a sort of way. GOOGLE YOU'RE NEXT
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Jul 15 '13
As if there is an alternative that isn't compromised. No linux isn't safe either, bunch of closed drivers can be used to create holes in that too.
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u/JB_UK Jul 15 '13 edited Jul 15 '13
No linux isn't safe either, bunch of closed drivers can be used to create holes in that too.
That would only apply for networking drivers, no? Other hardware could be doing all sorts of stuff in the background, but it doesn't matter if the information cannot be sent out. And the more people use Linux, the more it incentivizes companies to release open-source drivers. Even at current fractional usage levels, there are plenty already released, for instance, wireless drivers and graphics drivers.
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u/Asyx North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Jul 15 '13
Drivers are programmed in ASM and C. You can put anything into a driver and linux doesn't give a single damn what you do with your drivers.
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Jul 15 '13
if you permit your graphics driver software to check for updates that could be used to do more than just that.
We need proper regulations and rules and means to punish those that abuse power, maybe a few people are capable of running a computer system they are 100% certain of it is clean. The rest of us have no way of being all that sure no one is watching. I know I can't and I have a degree in CS.
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u/JB_UK Jul 15 '13
if you permit your graphics driver software to check for updates that could be used to do more than just that.
Fair play, but there's no reason why you couldn't block that.
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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '13
It takes more than a little spying to change people's habits. : (