Re: Wiretapping Linux?

[Chase Venters]

On Tue, 16 May 2006, Måns Rullgård wrote:

> Chase Venters <chase.venters@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > The thing is that there is enough peer review in the open source world
> > that not only would it be *difficult* to slip in some intentionally
> > malicious code (and I don't think any malicious code of much potential
> > would be likely to make it past LKML, especially if it doesn't closely
> > adhere to CodingStyle :P) but it would not be long before someone
> > noticed it.
>
> Some details on a real attempt: http://kerneltrap.org/node/1584

Wow. Did anyone ever find out who edited CVS, and how they did it? (I 
assume David Miller didn't have anything to do with it :P)

Yeah, so to wrap this malware conversation up -- the most effective way to 
implant malicious code in Linux is to crack into developer machines and 
sneak the changes in.

And hope that someone doesn't notice.

The original poster speaks of spyware - I think spyware would end up being 
a few lines more than a fake current->uid test(set). So it's not proper to 
say malicious code couldn't be inserted into Linux; rather, it's just not 
very likely to get anything very complicated in there. The bigger the 
elephant, the harder it is to dress it up as an elf.

Thanks,
Chase