Sunday, February 28, 2016

Thoughts on Linux Mint Hack


I've always wondered whether somebody may have hacked any of the Linux distros I have used over the years. And now the day has come when I've been informed of precisely that. Well, Windows is not exactly the most secure OS in the world, either, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Anyway, Clem, the founder of Linux Mint, informed everybody almost immediately of the hack, and in my opinion that's best practice. Some people are now saying, oh dear, Linux Mint is horribly insecure, go back to Debian or Ubuntu or Windows, etc. Anyone that uses this occasion to criticize is just a dirty bird. Not fair play. Was the United States government never hacked? If the State gets hacked, then who is safe? Get real, read the news, drink a cup of coffee, whatever it takes to return to the reality that the rest of us are living in. I honestly do not know what planet some of these naysayers live on. Oh, Wordpress is insecure, is it? Well, then how come my WP site never gets hacked? Learn about security, for one thing, and then talk.

The Internet is a Wild, Wild West, always has been, but nevertheless, much progress has been made on the security front. Things are better now, because fences and gates have been invented and refined, and backups, logs and site analysis tools are now routine, although definitely not everyone understands these things. Some shops don't have a proper web site admin, and they tend to be the shops that get hacked.

The downside to all of this is that Clem is being forced to worry over security, and less time will get devoted to the version 18. The other downside is that the forums look very primitive now. It is like a bomb went off on the web site, and it looks worse. As if Clem didn't have his hands full just coping with GNOME's peculiarities, trying to get it incorporated into Cinnamon.

No comments:

techlorebyigor is my personal journal for ideas & opinions