Dear Microsoft: fsf.org is not a "gambling site"
fsf.org
fsf.org
I could not agree more.
To me, the essence of that quote is that any sane security model must include the vendor as a threat, but when I do not have control over my own hardware and software, I have little to no ability to respond to that threat. Moreover, without access to source code, I have little to no ability to audit my own security. Fundamentally, I do not believe in the idea that security can reasonably exist without auditability.
Or anyone who gets access to the vendor's database.
If the vendor is in control, you aren't secure.
Open-source and closed-source software really isn't all that much different for users. All the differences require you to become a professional in the field, or a subset of the field before they mean anything.
Can you say "I would like to keep using Exchange, but I do not trust Microsoft, so I will switch to another vendor"?
PS: this has to do both with open source and open formats as well.
Security is one concern of many. The overriding one being business value. Using Exchange as an example, it would be difficult for me to come up with something that matches its value. I don't, however, trust it. As an aside, I trust Gmail even less, because at least Exchange runs in an environment I control.
And therein lies the solution. Defence in depth. It's a process, and should not rely on any single product. Open- or closed-source.
I might choose to protect myself against external, internal and vendor attacks (unintentional as well as malicious) by installing a network firewall, a proxy service, and an application firewall. I might then deploy access controls that authenticate users and authorise their access based on certain criteria. I'd devise a patch strategy. I'd implement an audit policy. I'd do a whole heap of stuff.
Frankly, the argument for either open- or closed source is getting tired. Any threat can be mitigated. It's success depends entirely on the value of the asset being protected, and the amount of money you're prepared to spend protecting that asset.
Apologies, I wasn't very clear.
That said, compromising a sysadmin account in Exchange does not yield email content. Assuming service accounts have been correctly configured (ref. security policy). However, a Gmail sysadmin can have (and has, in the past) access to users' email content.
If I wanted acess to anyone's email account I'd opt for a social engineering attack on that user directly. Given history that's the easiest vector.
If you think advocating defense in depth as a strategy betrays a lack of understanding of security then, well, damn.
Actually, the user doesn't have to trust anyone: the user can ask more than one party to audit the code. In fact, with open source, there are, usually, many different parties already auditing the code.
If you give everyone 100% control over every interface - this will drive the world crazy. How much control do you have on your house lock - do you take it apart everyday? How much control do you have on temperature regulation in your fridge, except for temperature dial?
People in computing must realize that a computer is just another interface for a user. For a programmer, I agree with you. But if I made cupcakes for a living, I'd want control over my oven, not my computer. As a programmer though, I trust that my oven company did their job and eat food out of it everyday.
What FSF is debating is "fundamental" and full control of inner workings of the software, which is what I find a bit narrow.
I actually have taken apart the locking mechanism once to repair it. It got stuck, the door wouldn't open, so I fixed it. I didn't take out the barrel or dig too deep in, but I didn't need to. If I hadn't been technically competent to do that, I would have been able to hire someone else to do it for me.
No, but I can hire any locksmith of my choosing to look at it.
The point isn't that end-users are in control of it, but that end-users can hire experts to adjust it if needed. Giving a manufacturer complete aftermarket control of their product is entirely different.
The difference comes when you want to customize its behavior--in the open source version, you could five until the code yourself or, more likely, hire somebody to look into it for you. Similarly, if you were very worried about security, you could run an independent audit of the code yourself. Neither of these options exists for a proprietary product.
Basically, you're arguing against a straw man. Nobody is suggesting giving the user more options in the interface. Rather, the suggestion is to give the user access to the source code in case they want something modified.
The "fundamental control" in question is about who gets to see and use the source code, not about what the average user can do from a GUI.
What does that have to do with whether the unmodified one must means user has no security?
All you said can mean you can be more sure that open source code is secure. But it does in no way proof that "proprietary security software mean no security at all (EDIT: better be 'proprietary security software mean user has no security')".
Similarly, if you were very worried about security, you could run an independent audit of the code yourself. Neither of these options exists for a proprietary product.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd441041.aspx
Unless you consider the 'user' to be the employee sitting at the desk which is a topic for another discussion, unless the FSF is claiming that website blocking by an employer is user abuse.
Edit: There's speculation that the gambling classification was triggered by a pattern matching algorithm because of accepting bitcoin which mostly gambling sites tend to do. Maybe that's why only the donation page got blocked.
Still, you have to trust Microsoft the software will run as expected. With proprietary software, you have no option but to trust the provider. It doesn't matter how much they claim the software is secure, you will never know.
BadVista campaign pages were conspicuously absent from
Microsoft's live.com search results, even though the same
pages had been appearing on the first page of "windows
vista" Google results for some time. Many people contacted
Microsoft about this, and eventually the pages began
appearing as one would expect.
(Unfortunately the place where DDG seems to least effective is when I'm looking for a particular article by searching for a certain phrase; Google always seems to find it and with DDG I have to dig around. So hopefully that article isn't anti-Google...)
"Forefront TMG 2010 blocks malicious sites more effectively by using aggregated data from multiple URL filtering vendors and the anti-phishing and anti-malware technologies that also protect Internet Explorer 8 users. The highly accurate categorization of websites also blocks sites that may violate corporate policies."
Unless IE8 blocks fsf, then we can assume that the "multiple URL filtering vendors" are the source. Does anyone know who the URL filtering vendors might be?
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/forefront/threat...
While we cannot say anything for certain until Microsoft responds - I think their response will essentially blame a "partner" and release an update which removes the FSF from the gambling blacklist.
Or, shock of shocks, maybe one person, working for the third-party that sold Microsoft that particular "dodgy domains" list, clicked the wrong checkbox on that one domain (of many hojillions checked per week).
I think you probably need to calm down though.
If there was a person typing IP addresses into a list I can imagine them making a typo, but obviously that's absurd and these lists are auto-created. So how does a website get labelled as a gambling site?
They will then forward this to a partner likely owned in the West but who out-sources most of the actual work to somewhere cheap: like India or perhaps China.
Then you have a bunch of people who come into work, and work their way through a massive list of web-pages trying to spend no more than few seconds on each (metrics etc) and put them into boxes: - Adult - Web Mail - Social Media - News - Entertainment - Gambling - et al
These lists are then sold to many companies like Microsoft, firewall vendors like Sonicwall, Parent Software like Netnanny, and also sold on to people who write anti-spam software.
Essentially it is an entire industry.
These companies have never little trust in their employees. A flip side of this is a lack of respect. Blocking none work related sites is an acceptable if not desirable result.
There is normally a way to "complain" if something is incorrectly tagged but it is after the fact. The local administrators (or parents) can normally add it to a whitelist while it gets resolved.
You know... This does not exactly ensures quality.
That's OK. I'm pretty sure it's malice already.
First, I really doubt all but a handful of companies would actually do this on account of the FSF site being blocked. It's a simple cost benefit analysis. The cost of replacing such software is high and the occurrences of such mistakes that would actually hurt a company are rare. Therefor it's not happening the vast majority of times.
Secondly, I'm surprised the FSF is using a service that has anything to do with proprietary, closed source, non-free software. Given their philosophy you'd think they'd have found some way to collect donations that uses free software from top to bottom. Maybe I'm way off on this but one of my first thoughts was that maybe even complaining about this takes away just a bit of the FSF's credibility. They preach the gospel of free software but when it's time to fundraise they make an exception? Is this a "do as I say, not as I do" situation now?
I'm not trying to be overly critical and I realize this may be a bit pedantic too. It's not a big deal to me, just thought it interesting. Food for thought maybe.
They would also have to forego actually purchasing anything incase proprietary software was used anywhere in the supply chain.
It's a bit like the whole "Al-gore/Jet" argument, sometimes you have to make sacrifices of principles for the "bigger picture".
Where does FSF's post say anything about FSF using proprietary software? As far as I can tell, the post is simply about how some r/GNU redditors [1] noticed how Microsoft's gateway was incorrectly categorizing donate.fsf.org, not that FSF itself is using a service that is proprietary (unless you mean PayPal).
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/gnu/comments/v21q3/how_microsoft_thr...
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/bitcoins-a-new-way-to-don...
* perl.org => pornography * duckduckgo => web proxy * google images => image sharing * flickr, devianart, youtube, vimeo etc. => media sharing * HN => hacking * securityfocus => gambling
There are more cases, of course. That's why I use tethering to access the internet at work ;)
If you have poo, fling it now!