Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yver | Hacker News Reader

And suddenly, people like Richman Stallman seem much less crazy when they ask for free (as in libre) hardware, free BIOS, free everything.

View on HN

Is 'free as in libre' hardware really any protection if the NSA intercepted your device at the border and planted undetectable MITM malware/hardware? Are you really gonna take the whole thing apart and check every chip for modifications?

No. And Stallman (unfortunately) doesn't seem to focus too much on the security aspect of it. His focus is mostly on the freedom, as in ability to copy/modify/do-as-you-please aspect of it.

The "free as in libre" part would make it much more difficult to create an undetectable MITM. You might have a much greater diversity of hardware, so they'd have to find and maintain more exploits. The full software/firmware stack would be verifiable by cryptographic signature. The hardware itself could be checked by looking for chips that don't match other units from the same lot, either visually or behaviorally, and even x-raying the components if necessary.

After sitting through an embarrassingly awkward 2 1/2 hr talk by Richard Stallman at SJSU last month, I think he actually is a little... off. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take his message to heart.

For the record, rms uses a Lemote [1] computer, which uses a Loongson chip [1] designed from scratch by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Given the fact this computer is 100% Chinese design, it's unlikely that NSA is able to add any spyware or backdoor at the source.

[1] http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson

Because the GPL is the best defense against an adversary that gets to redefine laws as they see fit?

I'm all for FLOSSing all the things, but it wouldn't help one bit here.

You know, I'd actually be less outraged if the NSA's backdoors weren't so damn buggy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com