On Thu, 17 Dec 2020 07:08:54 -0800
Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh(a)pacbell.net> wrote:
I read that there has been a major security hack of at least two
companies, FireEye and SolarWinds, which supply security software to
the US Government and to major corporations.
(see:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/opinion/fireeye-solarwinds-russia-hack...
). Does this have any effect on Fedora?
BTW/OT: One of the comments reads "...President Carter [said] that to
this day, if he wants to send a secure message, he hand-writes letters
to foreign leaders to avoid surveillance."
Wow! That's dire! I don't see how this particular problem could affect
Fedora, since the software in question is proprietary, so would never be
anywhere near Fedora or the linux kernel. There might be isolated
cases where hybrid systems (mixed Fedora and compromised commercial
systems) could lead to issues for Fedora, but they should be manageable
on the Fedora side.
The deeper issue is that this illustrates how easy it is for skilled
programmers to insert malicious code into software so that it does
nefarious things while not being detected. That certainly affects
Fedora because it affects any system using complex software.