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Comment by cj | Hacker News Reader

> Is it wise to simply keep private repositories away from GitHub at this point?

This sounds like the equivalent of "Use MacOS because most viruses target Windows". Which some people do, and yes it probably lowers your risk, but there are ways to use Windows (and Github) securely.

If you're really paranoid about your source code, you should probably self-host your own instance of Github/Gitlab/etc (and lock it down through VPNs, IP white lists, etc) rather than using their cloud service.

This approach also gives you first hand access to logs that would expose internal bad actors, if that's included in your threat model.

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> there are ways to use Windows ... securely

Going to respectfully elaborate on this specific point, with full awareness that it's not core to the discussion, and that my opinion is my own and highly subjective, and that I'm not fully disagreeing but wish to point out a nuance. There are too many ways to put hidden software on a Windows system, which makes it harder to use securely than my OS of choice, macOS.

It's more difficult to audit a Windows system than a macOS system. For example, background processes can be installed on Windows in dozens of ways. Go download AutoRuns (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/aut...) and look how many tabs it has. The docs even say "You'll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically!". UAC mitigates this somewhat, but it lacks granularity; it's all-or-nothing so you'll click Allow without knowing what's actually going to happen. And then you have COM registration and win32 APIs that let applications get at other windows easily. Layer upon layer of legacy compatibility make the whole system feel like a mess - at least to me.

Using macOS securely is also quite involved of course - for example auditing Homebrew's behavior when it downloads half the open-source world just for one package. But when it comes to stuff running in the background, by comparison, macOS Ventura recently added a comprehensive list of launchd agents and other daemons that run at startup; each of which can be toggled (though the UI doesn't allow you to drill into them). It's all on one pane in System Settings, built into the OS, no need for Sysinternals' separate tools.

Using macOS securely is a lot easier, in my experience. There are ways to use Windows securely, but it's a lot harder, and (I think) that makes it not worth the trouble. Using macOS securely is a lot closer to just using macOS.

That said, for any OS, it goes without saying to only install trusted software. It's possible to cleanse both OSes fully of software you no longer want, but on Windows it always feels like surgery, whereas 90% of cleaning something from macOS is dragging the application bundle to the Trash.

> there are ways to use Windows (and Github) securely.

No proprietary software you have no control over or ability to audit can ever be considered secure.

It depends, as always, on the threat model you are trying to defend against.

If you give a third party essentially limitless access to execute arbitrary code on your hardware, then you cannot really assert anything with certainty about that machine. That makes meeting most/all threat models difficult.

I get what you're saying but if my threat model doesn't include Microsoft or state-level actors that can co-opt Microsoft or buy/develop hoarded Windows zero-days, then a patched Windows box is probably good enough.

Fuzzing any 'enterprise' SaaS is a frightful experience.

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