Re: In an Era of Russian Hacks, the US Is Still Installing Russian Software on Government Systems

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: David Jefferson <d_jefferson () yahoo com>
Date: Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 6:45 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: In an Era of Russian Hacks, the US Is Still
Installing Russian Software on Government Systems
To: <dave () farber net>


I have to disagree with Mr. Diwan.  While I don't think anyone suggests
blindly purging the U.S. of Russian (or Chinese, or any other nation's)
software, one would have to be willfully naïve to pay no attention to the
provenance of software, and the more critical the application is,
especially in a national security or critical infrastructure context, the
more serious should be the attention paid.

When in doubt it makes sense to replace critical or national security
software with alternatives whose provenance is better known and trusted. It
also makes sense to prefer open source software built locally to licensed
binary and perhaps obfuscated software.

Since software is an active agent inside your organization, you have to pay
attention to the risks it poses just as you must pay attention to the
backgrounds of employees you might hire for critical roles.

This is not just American jingoism.  Most advanced countries do the same
when they can.  I seem to recall that some years ago China made a blanket
decision that they would not run Microsoft operating systems on certain
categories of government computers.  This would seem prudent to me from
their point of view.  Perhaps someone else remembers this and can elaborate.

David Jefferson


On Jun 15, 2017, at 1:53 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:

Begin forwarded message:


*From: *Hasan Diwan <hasan.diwan () gmail com>
*Subject: **Re: [IP] Re: In an Era of Russian Hacks, the US Is Still
Installing Russian Software on Government Systems*
*Date: *June 15, 2017 at 4:26:42 PM EDT
*To: *"dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>

Prof Farber,
[for ip if you wish]
The insinuation that "made in Russia" is equivalent to spyware is a sleight
of hand that is incorrect. While it may be true in some cases, in a vast
majority of cases it is not. To wit, my mother was born in Lebanon, her
mother was born in Gaza and I was born and raised in Western Europe and I
also lived in the Lebanon. I now live in Spain, but was in America till
May. The software products I write are done on equipment probably built by
some bloke whose name I will never know and location I will never visit
(and possibly can't even find on a globe). In other words, it could be
Russia or China or North Korea. I don't know. I don't care either. And
neither should our media or politicians. -- H


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