Building a New Computer

**oldrocker99** · October 31st, 2014

Originally Posted by OrangeCrate

I've Googled for confirmation on your comment, but didn't find anything. Could you please state your source, and provide a link? Thanks.

I swear that I did see it last spring on closed some Linux news site,

but I have been unable to find it at all. I should have considered the source.

The point I was trying to make is that Windows viruses are everywhere, with hundreds of new ones every day. Reverse engineering Windows, and finding the security holes everywhere (which some people do for fun even), makes it easy for a cracker to create something that takes advantage of the porosity and, therefore, vulnerability, of relying on closed-source code. The Stuxnet virus, which crippled the Iranian centrifuge project, was transmitted by a USB deive. This virus took over the Siemens program, a Windows program that controlled the centrifuges, and ramped up their speed until the machines broke from the out-of-specification high speed.

An in-law, who seems wedded at the hip to Windows, and for whom I had to install Start8 for him, so he'd at least have a familiar menu, got badly infected by his carelessly clicking on a link, and it was not detected by the virus checker he had installed. He went to a nephew, who at least was aware of the virus and was able to remove it.

Commercial games, which are 99% closed-source, are also attacked, usually "cracking," but also to interfere with, say, the integrity of a connection for online gamers.

The bottom line is that this is why FOSS software is better than closed-source programs, especially when OSes are concerned (as though I need to say that on this forum) for those kind of reasons. As Eric S. Raymond said, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."