Re:SolarWinds hackers were able to access Microsoft source code
by m4rtink on Thursday December 31, 2020 @11:57PM
(#25600979)
Most importantly, how do you check the binary you are running is actually built from the source code the vendor says it is if the source is not open ?
They might sincerely thing so, not knowing they were targeted and now all the binaries they ship are also containing a payload added by the attacker.
With open source software and especially the Linux distro model where one set of people writes the software and another buikds it from source and integrates it is much harder if not impossible to pull off such an attack affecting all users of a piece of software.
With the Windows model, you don't check your guests at the door. You can't search all guests so you assume all guests are hostile and with it you're always taxed with playing security theater which can not only be expensive in terms of hardware resources but mental resources as well as losing more control over your own environment. Because you let unaudited people in your home, before long you have to lock down most parts of it, even from yourself. In gaining control you've lost control because you don't control for openness in the first place. For the few binaries I run on Linux I sandbox them in a VM anyway. But different models, different hosts, each has their weaknesses.