[Info-vax] Where is EISNER:: and who funds it?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-21, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
> Den 2021-12-21 kl. 19:54, skrev Simon Clubley:
>> On 2021-12-21, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> With someone else having complete access to your system and all its
>>> data?
>>>
>> 
>> Your operating system vendor has complete access to your data and your
>> secrets.
>
> What do you mean?
>
> Would VSI have complete access to our data, if it was stored on an
> OpenVMS instance running at Azure or AWS? How would that work?
>

Nothing to do with cloud instances and nothing to do with just VSI.
(IE: Simon _isn't_ on a VSI related rant. :-))

By definition of what it does, the operating system has direct access
to your data. If that operating system had a backdoor added to it, the
people who ordered the backdoor to be added would have direct access
to your data.

This is nothing new. There were active suspicions about this kind of
thing 20 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

The backdoor could be added by the vendor on the order of a government
or it could be added by employees really working for someone else without
the vendor's knowledge.

>> Do you trust them ?
>
> In this case, VSI? To not tamper with our data? Yes I do.
>

This is not directed to VSI, but to operating system vendors in general.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.