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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