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Yep, it's amazing how many people start by assuming that their OS is safe... and there's no basis for this assumption, even without assuming intentional backdoors baked in, there are some many 0 day exploits for all the software we use daily that...

...heck, I'm not even 90% sure that compilers don't add backdoors to software (it's not paranoia... but with a 30 y o idea, you can imagine that people have had time to refine it to unimaginable subtlety :) http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html)




The only alternative to making this assumption is to treat computers as compromised non-trustable entities, forgoing their use as true extensions of the mind and leaving all individuals at the mercy of the ever-growing computing system. Instead, we treat the assumption as fact, making do with the imperfect OSs we have and incrementally fortifying them to solidify the assumption.




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