Vulnerability (need for money) found in the Church of BSD
LAST week, in our daily links, over a dozen links were included about a new revelations of flaws in a hugely popular encryption method. A paper presented by award-winning academics demonstrated a serious weakness. OpenSSH was among the alleged targets, potentially allowing spies to infiltrate, intercept and decrypt communications/data relayed over SSH. The philosophy and principles (UNIX) of OpenSSH had kept it strong for a very long time.
"Knowing the role that social engineering plays in weakening encryption, the last thing one needs right now is PRISM pioneer (first company) and a back doors proponent like Microsoft inside the OpenSSH community."Those who keep abreast of privacy news (including NSA leaks) will know that there is an aggressive effort to crack SSH. Some ciphers were recently phased out or deprecated as a result. Knowing the role that social engineering plays in weakening encryption, the last thing one needs right now is PRISM pioneer (first company) and a back doors proponent like Microsoft inside the OpenSSH community. As we pointed out earlier this year, OpenSSH is being subjected to E.E.E. (embrace, extend, extinguish) treatment from Microsoft [1, 2] because money talks. Microsoft has a lot of money (despite losses in the billions) and OpenBSD is underfunded, hence desperate for money.
Secure channels and Microsoft Windows are incompatible concepts. It cannot be done because Windows itself has back doors, allowing penetration at root (Administrator) level. Microsoft is now pushing its back-doored, insecure-by-design APIs into the SSH project and also puts people's keys on boxes with such inherent insecurities. How terrible a recipe is that? Is OpenBSD willing to compromise its credibility and reputation just because Microsoft gave it a 'generous' payment (some would call it a bribe)?
According to this update from Microsoft, they now intend to:
Leverage Windows crypto api’s instead of OpenSSL/LibreSSL and run as Windows Service...
"Microsoft takes something that's not its own and then 'bastardises' it, making it an inferior 'Windows thing' which spreads only because of the network effect or illegal bundling."iophk told us: "How much key code can they replace with dodgy homebrew and still be allowed to use the same name? Without the crypto, it is not the same software and merely a derivative."
Well, that's just how E.E.E. has historically worked. Microsoft takes something that's not its own and then 'bastardises' it, making it an inferior 'Windows thing' which spreads only because of the network effect or illegal bundling.
iophk has also pointed out to us that Roger A. Grimes, who works for Microsoft and IDG (news publisher) at the same time (clearly a conflict of interests), presents a false dichotomy, "freedom or security" (right there in the headline). Computer security is never the goal at Microsoft; they want back doors for so-called 'national security' (i.e. state power with remote access to citizens' PCs).
"The first rule of zero-days is no one talks about zero-days," reads this new headline (remember that Microsoft wilfully enables NSA access through zero-days).
"If Microsoft cannot honour Free software and respect the APIs of OpenBSD, OpenSSH, OpenSSL etc. then maybe it's time to tell Microsoft to take back its 'bribe' money and go away, leaving OpenSSH alone (and secure)."Microsoft's E.E.E. tactics are becoming a big threat not just to GNU/Linux but also to BSD and Free software as a whole. Microsoft now tries to become a GNU/Linux host, despite its known record of scanning every single file (claiming to do so because of child pornography) and colluding with the government for warrantless access to data stored on servers.
The E.E.E. against GNU/Linux is perhaps best demonstrated by this new article about how Microsoft tries to take over Big Data (a lot of data, sometimes incredibly sensitive) on GNU/Linux servers. "Last month Microsoft did something extraordinary," says the author, "something which demonstrates how completely the company has changed since its third CEO, Satya Nadella, took over."
Satya Nadella just turned the company into more of a surveillance company, as Vista 10 serves to remind us. He continues to attack GNU/Linux in many ways (including patent extortion) while saying that Microsoft "loves Linux' (a lie as big as a lie can get).
If Microsoft cannot honour Free software and respect the APIs of OpenBSD, OpenSSH, OpenSSL etc. then maybe it's time to tell Microsoft to take back its 'bribe' money and go away, leaving OpenSSH alone (and secure). Almost every distribution of GNU/Linux comes with OpenSSH. Microsoft is a wolf in sheep's clothing and it has no room inside FOSS until it quits attacking FOSS and collaborating with abusive espionage agencies like GCHQ and the NSA. ⬆