Hi guys,
My friend just sent me this.. i'm not so sure about the integrity of this.
Is this something to worry about? I have exams so I don't have enough time to dig deeper and understand this.
Cheers, dengreen1995
I believe The Tek covered a article about Microsoft having backdoors since windows 95
AFAIK they have 3 keys in windows and at least one of them is named something with NSA. Trusted Computing is really bad but not (much) relevant to backdoors and the article fails to notice that. Trusted Computing is about taking away controll from the user and giving it to some corp like microsoft ("Oh, you want to access your own file? Not without a licence of microsoft uber text editor 23" and that kind of bullshit).
So, yes, the NSA has backdoors in Windows (or whatever you want to call it) and yes, trusted computing is bad.
Come to the linux side, we have cookies.
I have ubuntu installed on my asus zenbook becuase I use it to do university work. I have cookies (:
All Versions of windows since 95 have a backdoor.
Im already using Ubuntu and Manjaro on my computers. Still having windows on my main rig tough
Yup, like Wickedwig says, the extistence of 3 keys has been proven, two of which are NSA keys. The third key wasn't even known by Microsoft itself, it was probably still in there from IBM OS/2 times, and noone at microsoft has an overview of the entire code, they're all strictly comparimentalized so that noone can "steal" the entire code (loooool). So they didn't know what they were selling themselves basically. In fact, Windows 8 is also known as Windows NT 6.2, so there is hardly any doubt that it's still in there, Windows has hardly evolved in 20 years. There may be more backdoors though, IBM has always been Von Neumann-ish with regards to establishment support and politics: extremely brilliant but at the same time extremely evil and dangerous sociopaths.
Problem is, since 2000 it's been impossible to do logical analysis on CPU's because the instructions are encrypted, and the Windows EULA has been changed to make it illegal to even do the analysis, and in the countries where that could impress people, encryption technology is on the munitions list, so in order to do the analysis, dedicated hardware has to be made, and it will require a lot of time. I'm sure the Chinese have done it, and are exploiting the weaknesses of the encryption technology already. Thing is that computer calculations are based on random number generation (also a Von Neumann invention by the way, just like the technique to set off an atom bomb, the preferred destruction plan of Kyoto instead of Nagasaki, the weather model that allowed for the timing of the Normandy invasion, the hydrogen bomb, MAD aka mutual destruction assurance, the common data/instruction data bus architecture, etc...), and because random number generators are never really random, there was an algoritm developed by Von Neumann to "correct" it, and when it comes to open source software, that correction is known, but when it comes to closed source (like the random number generators in an Intel CPU), whether that correction is correct, is not known. This seems to be a reoccuring thing, on Android devices, there is surprisingly also a "bug" that was even more surpisingly never corrected by Google, whereby the corrections in the linux kernel were disabled, and they incorporated their own, with the result that random was not so random anymore all of a sudden, which is why open source providers of encryption programs for Android also disable the dependance on the Android random number generation to provide reliable encryption, just like open source programs on linux allow for disabling the CPU's random number generators.
The general conclusion is that if it's not free and open source, it's spiked by the NSA/IBM. The worrying thing is that the majority of all big data systems in the world, are made by IBM, with Intel in second spot. And if the Chinese or North-Koreans have cracked the secret (which they have, I'm sure), they have considerably weakened the US's and the rest of the western world's chances in case of total cyberwar.
Aside from the NSA, because they will spy anyway, it's what they do, that governments snoop is one thing, but corporations is another thing. Microsoft or Google or Apple etc... have no business snooping or filtering content, even if they do it because the NSA or the ABJ (the Association of Bigotted Jesusfreaks) makes them do it. And now people are screaming NSA, but the real danger comes from these corporations, not from the NSA., because the NSA are just mercenaries for the government, but the data mining corporations are mercenaries on the black market, they work for the highest bidder and have no problem with commercial bigotry and governmental double agency. I just hate how when I look something up on google with my phone, even with firefox and local stored data selfdestruct programmed, I get "customized" results that don't give me the entire picture, whereas when I look something up on my PC's, where googe has no link to me, even though they are threatening the users that they should allow trackers in order to use their services legally (but I live in the EU, so I don't think so Google, just like any other site that wants to be active in Europe, you have to get prior explicit permission for every cookie, and you're not going to shut down your services in the EU and lose all that money anyway lol), I get relatively good results from page 3 on, whereby the first two pages can mostly be skipped because it's just google self-advertising anyway.
In short, so the NSA has a secret key in windows, and they know how to decode encryption that war performed on a non-open source system or an Intel CPU or an Android phone... big deal, let them spy like that, they are happy because they know everything, and we are happy because they don't have to install a camera in our bathroom or an agent in our kitchen to accomplish that. The real problem comes from data mining corporations that try to brainwash you by building a bubble around you, filtering information, with our without the help of a government, and are selling your info to other corporations that potentially are in debt against you, like insurance companies, banks, etc... Another big problem comes from other government mercenary organisations, that don't have the mission to secure the borders and the citizens, like the IRS or the police, have access to the information the NSA gathers. That is just not right. That is very very wrong, because it completely undermines the justice system and blatanly violates the right to a fair trial and the equality principle. The same goes for the socalled whistle blowers of the NSA. The NSA should shut up about those, and they should not let the FBI or whatever "deal" with them, because the NSA is an espionage department like the CIA or Army/Navy Intelligence Services, they should stay in their military parallel universe, and when the country is not formally at war, and martial law is not declared, they should accept that they can do nothing against defectors, double agents, whistle blowers, etc... those are the risks of their trade, and the result of their own mistakes and negligences. Persecuting a whistle blower for the NSA is a worse crime than a warcrime, because it's targeting civilians outside of the context of war... if that's a huge crime in times of war, imagine how much bigger a crime it is when there is no war going on. Pure logic.
http://rt.com/news/windows-8-nsa-germany-862/