Wireless interface
Matthew Seaman
matthew at FreeBSD.org
Mon Jan 28 11:27:36 UTC 2019
On 27/01/2019 00:37, Polytropon wrote:
> This is not a sarcastic question. I'm really asking
> myself (and you) why FreeBSD could_not_ be considered
> to be available to the public_without_ containing
> backdoors, spyware, or malware.
Actually, the project is struggling with a lack of information about its
userbase. If you're trying to make decisions about the lifecycle of
support for a particular device it certainly helps to have an idea about
how many people are using it. The recent exercise in deprecating
support for a number of NICs that were limited to 100Mb/s being a case
in point.
As for whether stock FreeBSD contains backdoors or spyware -- I'm pretty
sure it doesn't, but there are no absolute guarantees. You can boot it
up on a network and do some forensics on the network traffic it
generates and pretty well assure yourself it isn't "calling home". You
can scan the drives for the signatures of known malware and you can do a
line-by-line check of the source code to try and find backdoors. None
of these measures will /prove/ that such things dont exist, but they
will provide reasonable practical assurance of the security and
integrity of the system which is probably good enough for most users.
Cheers,
Matthew
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