Daniel Spisak on Technology

Yeah, you heard me right. Some whackjob actually said this at a conference recently:

http://www.eet.com/sys/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=DOULNYXURUXKKQSNDBCCKHY?articleID=18900949

“NEW YORK — A storm has erupted in the embedded community, with real-time operating systems house Green Hills charging that Linux is fundamentally insecure and wide open to security breaches by “foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists.”

“Now that foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists know that Linux is going to control our most advanced defense systems, they can use fake identities to contribute subversive software,” said O’Dowd, in a copy of the remarks released by Green Hills.

“If Linux is compromised, our defenses could be disabled, spied upon or commandeered,” O’Dowd continued. “Everyday new code is added to Linux in Russia, China and elsewhere throughout the world. Everyday that code is incorporated into our command, control, communications and weapons systems. This must stop.”

O’Dowd laid out a scenario in which the open source development process — where thousands of programmers contribute code that’s subject to public review before being folded into Linux — could be subverted via “Trojan Horses” illicitly slipped in the software.”

Riiiight, so RIGHT NOW THIS VERY MOMENT the above is happening:

1. China and Russia have agents posing as open source developers contributing code to “Linux” (the kernel? to GNU utils? to FSF apps?)

2. Hughes or Lockheed-Martin, etc is incoporating *DAILY* changes from the Linux kernel CVS tree into production defense systems?

3. …

There is NO #1 and sure as HELL no #2. I mean how stupid do you have to be to believe that a DoD contractor is going to be updating an embedded systems Linux kernel on a DAILY basis from a live CVS tree?

Linux is OPEN SOURCE. You can LOOK at the code you are compiling you dimwitted idiot! Someone puts a backdoor into the Linux kernel I garantee you that it will be noticed, it will get removed and that is assuming it even makes it to the point where it gets committed to the tree!

God, this man is slow. No wonder he is the CEO of his embedded systems company, they applied the Dilbert Principle en force majere.