>
> The easy answer is to approach someon like MS and have the company use
> its muscle in offering a "Special relationship" to one of the hardware
> vendors that makes attractive hardware and have a binding non-disclosed
> contract to install the spy and rootkit binary in its binary-only driver
> for linux. In that way, linux is deposed as having better security,
> making MS happy; the merchants get their marketing data and are happy;
> the spyware producer gets paid and is happy; and the linux users do all
> the dirty work to themselves by installing binary-only drivers and are
> happy because their super hardware works fully fiunctionally under linux.
>
> So, everyone is happy in this scenario, unless someone happens to
> restore /bin from a backup and gets a nasty surprise about a phone-home
> sitting in the kernel processes.
>
> If you think it cannot happen... Think again, and remember the stolen
> homework that became Excel, the plagiarized DOSes, the Nantes Commercial
> Court findings, the Ztore that was linux/Samba and was billed as secret
> and proprietary network storage devices....
>
> It happens all the time. The question is not _if_ but _When_ and _Who_.
>
> As long as users buy hardware and accept binary-only drivers, linux is
> as vulnerable to the installation of spyware as any other system. Most
> likely it will be a winmodem driver, but it coud be a video card or it
> may already have been a high-level sound card.
>
> Civileme
>
***** feels really tempted to change the subject of the thread to
"glad my PC is an old POS and i don't have any new hardware" ******
;o)
Damian
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Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
