[Cryptography] Understanding state can be important.

[Ray Dillinger]

On 12/28/2015 02:02 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
> At 11:45 AM 12/28/2015, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>> Maybe I've always been a suspicious bastard where software is concerned
> 
> Apparently, not suspicious enough.
> 
> It's nine o'clock; do you know what all of your processes (i.e., ps ax or equivalent) are doing?

Oh hell no, there's hundreds of running processes now.  I'm still a
suspicious bastard, but these days I feel utterly helpless to do
anything about it.  There is no practical alternative to complicated
OSes that start processes without permission and refuse to explain
what they are and why they're running.  I look at my process table,
I see $NAME I don't recognize, I ask "man $NAME" and there is no
such documentation.  One more mysterious thing that will crash my
system if I kill it but I have to look elsewhere to explain what it
is and why it's running.

> If you're running Win10, a goodly amount of disk & net traffic has to do with surveilling you

This is one of the reasons I don't.  The other is that there is even
less explanation of what the hell is running, and you can't even get
the code to check what the hell it does.

			Bear

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