NSA has total access via Microsoft Windows

[ka9yhd]

"WASHINGTON – The National Security Agency has backdoor access to all Windows software since the release of Windows 95, according to informed sources, a development which follows the insistence by the agency and federal law enforcement for backdoor “keys” to any encryption"

http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/nsa-has-total-access-via-microsoft-windows/

[djohnston]

From ComputerWorld:

NSA helped with Windows 7 development

The National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Microsoft on the development of Windows 7, an agency official acknowledged yesterday during testimony before Congress.

"Working in partnership with Microsoft and elements of the Department of Defense, NSA leveraged our unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide without constraining the user to perform their everyday tasks, whether those tasks are being performed in the public or private sector," Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security yesterday as part of a prepared statement.

"All this was done in coordination with the product release, not months or years later during the product lifecycle," Schaeffer added. "This will improve the adoption of security advice, as it can be implemented during installation and then later managed through the emerging SCAP standards."

Feeling warm and fuzzy yet? From net-security.org:

U.S. tech companies sharing bug info with U.S. govt before releasing fixes

Riley's sources have revealed that companies such as Microsoft and other Internet, security and software companies share information about vulnerabilities in their widely-used software before they issue a fix for them, and they can't be sure that this information is not misused to compromised foreign targets.

[djohnston]

But SELinux was developed with help from the NSA and parts of it are in the kernel.

True. But the Linux kernel has been well vetted over the years by many expert eyes. Can we say the same for the NT kernel?

There's always OpenBSD. For unhackable, there's OpenVMS. SPARC hardware, anyone?

[djohnston]

I started using Linux in 1998 or 1999 and I had a dual boot setup with two hard drives in my desktop machine.

You beat me by a couple of years. 

But what amazed me was that when looking at where the viruses were located, they were in the files from the dial up that I deleted.

I can relate. I had dialup using WindowsXP. I couldn't get the winmodem to work, so I used a real external one. I was running the best firewall I could find at the time. (It wasn't Zone Alarm. I'd have to look at my XP VM to remember the name.) Was running 3 virus checkers, 1 in real time and 2 more on demand. Had HijackThis and a couple of spyware cleaners.

As you know, going through a router with no physical firewall is dangerous for a Windows machine. Well, I could not keep drive-bys off my machine. Some the virus checkers would recognize but not delete or clean. I'd have to boot into "Safe Mode", (whatever that is), find the virus name in the process viewer, then open a separate window to rename the virus. I would then kill the virus process and very quickly hit the rename function. I didn't have much time, because after killing the process, it would respawn anyway.

This was in late 2001, XP was almost brand new, and it was when I finally ditched Windows for good and starting running Suse.

[melodie]

For unhackable, there's OpenVMS.

He that's not Free ?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS

Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase.[6]