this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 40 points 6 months ago (2 children)

And this right here is why you use open source apps.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 31 points 6 months ago (6 children)

This only would work if you check every line of source code, even the dependencies and build chain, and then build it yourself. See xz utils backdoor or heartbleed, etc.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 40 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The whole point is that at some point somebody can check, and you can have a higher level of trust in that than proprietary software.

And if someone does something like this then it has to be disguised as an innocuous bug, like heartbleed, they can't just install full on malware.

It's a different beast entirely.

[–] Jako301@feddit.de 19 points 6 months ago (2 children)

If we are talking about bigger projects with hundreds of thousands or millions of downloads, than this may be true. But smal scale projects have so few people actively looking through them that even to automatic scan done by the playstore has a higher chance of catching malware. It doesn't even have to be bad intent, two years ago there was a virus propagating trough the Java class files in minecraft mods which reached the PCs of quite a few devs before it was caught.

I don't dislike FOSS, a lot of the apps I use come straight from github, but all this talk about them beeing constantly monitored by third parties is just wishful thinking.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure you're understanding the argument: you cannot monitor closed source, therefore, you have at least as many eyes looking at my random crap on github as you do on the random crap some companies are doing.

[–] Jako301@feddit.de 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

And you didn't understand what I said. While you can not monitor closed source at the code level, you definitely can monitor the apps behaviour. Even the automatic threat protection from the playstore protect function is worth more than the measly amount of people looking through smaller projects codebases.

I hate Google with a passion, but with all their control over android devices, they are more than capable of scanning apps for malicious behaviour and automatically removing them. These few apps in the article are the 0.01% of malicious apps that their algorithm didn't detect.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net -4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Okay, but that's a different claim than that you have to personally vet and compile every single thing you use, which is what I was responding to.

Open source isn't perfect, but it is objectively and obviously better than closed.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 2 points 6 months ago

My whole point is that you can not point to a 3rd party checking for you and claim that it secure because someone else already checked. And I brought two examples which contradict this claim.

[–] dalakkin@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

There is no guarantee that the released app is exactly the same as the source code when getting it on Google Play. You'd have to decompile or compile from source and try to compare.

Using F-Droid is good alternative.

[–] NaiveBayesian@programming.dev 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The thing is we only know about these vulnerabilities in such great detail because the projects are open source. God knows what kund of vulnerabilities are hidden in closed source software.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but we don't know what we don't know. There are many problems like that in open source too, and even if we can look nobody does.

Therefore I find it problematic to say that just because you use open source programs you're safe like the parent tried to.

[–] NaiveBayesian@programming.dev 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, important to keep in mind that software being open source doesn't automagically make it secure™.

Still, I think it's important to stress that the benefits of open source outweigh the risks when it comes to security (imho).

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 3 points 6 months ago

I agree with that.

I don't agree with how it has been presented by the grandparent here as if open source somehow automatically makes it secure.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, of course. However, when it's open source, at least somebody is capable of checking those things, even if it is not you. Somebody in the community is capable of doing so.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yes, that is true, but let's not pretend that just because some one is theoretically able to, that all source code is constantly monitored by 3rd parties.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 6 points 6 months ago

Oh, absolutely, that's true. Definitely smaller projects have less audited code, and even bigger projects can have bugs. Heart bleed ring a bell, LOL. However, when open source software has a bug and it is discovered, it is fixed by somebody in record time, whereas in closed source software, you don't know that there is a bug that can be exploited and it definitely won't be fixed until it's reverse engineered or something or exploited.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Being open-source is not sufficient, but necessary.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

check every line ... yourself.

🚩🚩🚩

A very classic lie, disinformation, used to spread anti-libre software. Anti-libre software bans us, not only me but everyone else, from removing malicious source code.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Very disingenuous of you to fight a strawman and proclaim victory by claiming that I said things which I never did. But if that's what floats your boat. But for everyone else, try to find any mention of anti-libre software in the original claim.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world -5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

'Open source' is created to subvert libre software.

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What are you talking about? You are digging yourself in a trench against me for some reason and you dig deeper every time. I have no idea what your agenda is, but I am stopping participation in it.

I don't know about you but I have always been a free software advocate, see

But anyway, I'm not interested in whatever this discussion derailed into.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Then, you would know anti-libre software bans, not you, us separately and together from proving its claims and removing malicious source code.

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If you download apps from fdroid, at the very least you can be sure that the binary is 100% generated from the provided source code, the devs can't pull a switcheroo like submitting an altered version of app (e.g. inserting malware) that doesn't match the published source code.

[–] Peffse@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

With the new changes to the repo management, that's not going to remain true for much longer.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world -1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

'Open source' misses the point of libre software.

[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You're right, I should clarify better. When I say open source, what I mean is totally open and totally free to contribute to, like the MIT or patchy licenses. Source viewable is a whole different can of worms and not what I mean, so I should be more specific in future.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Contributing isn't the point. AGPL helps us keep control of our own computing.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

They used to be synonymous. Of course now we have conbtributor licenses

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

It was invented to derail libre software.