Green Hills: Linux Security Controversy, Part II

“Many of the objections to my assertion that the Linux operating
system is unsafe for defense systems were based on the dangerous
misconceptions that it is equally easy for foreign intelligence
agents or terrorists to infiltrate malicious code into any
operating system and that the many eyes looking at the Linux source
code will find any malicious code infiltrated into Linux.

“The most critical software in a computer system is the
operating system code that runs in the computer’s privileged mode.
Privileged-mode code controls all of the operations,
communications, and security of the computer system. It has
unrestricted access to anything in the computer. Privileged-mode
code can read or write any data on any device. It can send or
receive messages from any other computer system, disk drive, or
monitor. It can do anything it wants with anything that the
computer controls, it can turn (or not turn) the tank, fire (or not
fire) the missile, transmit (or not transmit) a message…”

Complete
Story