FOSSPicks
FOSSPicks
Nate explores the top FOSS including a starship bridge simulator, an offline translator, a stateless password manager, and a de-googled version of Chromium.
Backdoors for All
As I was leafing through the latest "Crypto-Gram" newsletter, I found author Bruce Schneier's take on the recent showdown between Apple and the UK government. In brief, the UK tried using its draconian laws to have Apple secretly place a backdoor in its iCloud ADP (Advanced Data Protection). Rather than compromise its end-to-end encryption, Apple disabled the feature altogether in the country.
Security experts point out that backdoors can also be accessed by the bad guys, as evidenced by the recent Salt Typhoon hack of US telecoms systems designed to facilitate court-ordered wire tapping. Apple was also issued a gag order not to reveal the UK government's demands. It's only thanks to a whistleblower leaking the story to The Washington Post that we know about it.
Other companies offering proprietary encryption products can also be subjected to secret subpoenas. This can expose sensitive data – not just to law enforcement but to threat actors such as foreign hacking groups. While it's technically feasible to backdoor open source software, the code is regularly reviewed for security bugs by the community. When it comes to secure messaging, choose FOSS options such as Signal. If you need to back up your data, Nextcloud also supports verifiable end-to-end encryption.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.