Linux: security through obscurity?

Linux: security through obscurity?

Posted Nov 11, 2004 16:55 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75)
In reply to: Linux: security through obscurity? by james
Parent article: Linux: security through obscurity?

I suspect that a lot of the security engineering is going to have to be usability engineering: making the easy way the safe way, and the safe way the easy way.

And I think that the author has the correct general approach to that problem, too; ensure that there are enough Free Software alternatives included with the distribution. Comprehensive distributions like Debian and Gentoo have enormous libraries of software available, and it's probably easier to install that software through apt or emerge than it is to download and install a package from a third party site. It's always possible that the distro will make a mistake and include a malicious package, but it does provide a much higher barrier to trojan-type malware than if users are installing random programs off the net.

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