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Re:Local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Linux by Gigachad on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @08:46PM (#50374032)
It also used to just be fine patching the bugs as they were found. Its only recently where that model has fallen apart and we now need to prevent the bugs from existing in the first place.
Re:Local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Linux by pianopatrick on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @09:47PM (#50374483)
It might have seemed fine. But this means that for the last 30 years anything of value on most computer networks was up for grabs if you could just find some of the thousands of vulnerabilities.

Like, I bet Anthropic and OpenAI run on a combination of Windows, Mac and Linux. That likely means that most intelligence agencies worth their salt have thoroughly penetrated those companies at one time or the other. So the model weights that those companies spent billions of dollars training are likely in the hands of all sorts of people all over the world.

Similarly for most of our weapons manufacturers. Unless they've really gone to great lengths like air gaps and such - and maintained that - the technical details of most American weapons are likely in the hands of many intelligence agencies.

Same for the banking details of politicians, and the daily schedules of people in power, and the messages everybody in Washington D.C. are sending each other and on and on. All of this stuff exists on computer networks that run on windows / linux with thousands of vulnerabilities. A treasure trove for intelligence agencies.

Similarly for most corporations. All the money spent on R&D and the results of that research can just be hacked away and taken out over the network because we chose speed over security. The whole idea of "Investing in R&D" seems kinda silly in that world. You put the fruits of your expensive research on a computer on a network. That network could be hacked by any hacker who can find any one of the thousand vulnerabilities, including your business competitors and geopolitical rivals.

So I don't think it was really fine.