this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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I don’t want to sound dismissive, this is a genuine question and not an attack on Linux.
Other than security by obscurity, how is it possible that an operating system whose entire source code is available to hackers to peruse at will could be more secure than a closed source one?
Because if a vuln gets found or exploited, it gets immediately patched, often with some big backing by OEMs that run on Linux.
Open source also reduces the likelihood of exploitable bugs going unnoticed because everyone can see and play with the source code by themselves.
There is a risk of malicious merge requests, but so far that hasn't been a problem besides a university getting banned for pointing out the issue with a live test without telling the devs.
Much of linux is also designed to be hardened by default because it's used on so much infara. SELinux by itself is a great example because it was essentially created by RedHat and now is a major standard for MAC.
Windows on the other hand needs Microsoft alone to solve the problem. No one can patch it themselves, and there's no guarantee the patches will work, which has happened several times. I believe print spooler basically had to be disabled because there was no good solution due to implementation.
The amount of Windows OS specific exploits vs Linux specific exploits kind of shows the results of closed source vs open source.
The worst vuln I can think of for Linux is dirty cow which is a local priv esc on basically Linux kernels 2.x-4.x which was a big deal when it was discovered because of the range of versions
Meanwhile windows had eternal blue, a whole remote code execution that existed on every version of windows since win95 that the NSA kept for probably a decade before it was leaked.
Imagine for a moment that the business world transitioned to Linux, and now there's enormous incentive for all adversaries from state sponsored to financially motivated criminals to spend all their time hunting through linux source code.
Do you think the ideas above stand up? (I'm not saying they dont)
Would linux vulnerabilities be found at a higher rate? I wonder if they aren't now because there aren't as many eyes on them. Sure there's corporate side project efforts and volunteers, just curious how that stacks up against the amount of research happening to break Windows systems.
NSA would definitely want to keep some linux exploits around if their adversaries were using linux instead of windows. I think the result would be the same regarding eternal blue.
The point is, they already did. 99% of webservers run Linux. They are all out in the open and hackers love to get their hand on them as they are likely to have mailservers on them and they have a public IP so they can always be reached.
And most of them do not get hacked. And those that do mostly get hacked due to bad passwords or bad website code. I administer one and see the thousands of attacks running up against it daily (most are just attempts to log in with basic credentials). And of course I see the daily influx of updates from Linux.
If a new security flaw is seen, its often quite difficult to use. And with Linux somebody makes a patch before simple tool for hackers are out. With Microsoft products you wait till the next patch day, in the best case critical exploited bugs are patched in days. Also security flaws in closed source products are often easier to exploit and tools to use them are available fast. (Such flaws are often already discovered in open source products by third eyes and testers before they make it to production systems.)
Of course there are exceptions to the rule, like heartbleed. This was an easy to exploit flaw in an often used Linux service and it caused a big turmoil because many where to slow to patch their systems.
Also of course if Linux gets more popular on the desktop more software will be an attractive target for malicious actors and some software may get popular before many people take a look at the source code. But the situation will still be much better compared to closed source systems.
(Also of course more closed source software will be made for Linux then)