Quote from: achow101 on March 27, 2018, 04:47:56 PM

Quote from: aliashraf on March 27, 2018, 10:24:40 AM

I'm not objecting just confused: Is it about firmware, BIOS, fucking NVIDIA device drivers or what? We have Linux and Free BSD, don't we? Is it impossible to have Core's wallet running on top of a clean installed Linux?

I'm seriously interested in your term 'closed source computer', actually it is my main research topic for the last couple of years, I'm just wondering how deep is your interpretation of this concept and whether you have developed any idea as an alternative?

There's more to a computer than just the OS. A lot of firmware such as processor microcode are closed source. So it doesn't matter whether the OS you use is open source; if the firmware for your hardware and the hardware itself is closed source, then you are at risk of that closed source being malicious or containing something that can be exploited. One example of this is the Intel Management Engine which could allow someone to remotely access and control your computer and there's no way to disable it because it is baked into the hardware and firmware, both of which are also closed source.

I know about Intel's ME, but I was just asking OP whether he is mentioning it or what?

As of Intel's ME, there are solutions to neutralize or disable it people even suggest not to use Intel processors made since 2008 and AMDs since 2013.

But I think it is not just about foolish architectures like this and even a system built around an 'innocent' 80386 cpu is susceptible not because of its bios or any other hardware potential backdoor but for a more inherent characteristic of our contemporary technological paradigm that allows machines to be dominated by attackers without disclosure.

By 'attackers' I don't just refer to crackers or state agents I am mentioning the owners, legitimate owners as well!
Imagine some black hat cracker who goes to the market buys a laptop, installs some evil software on it, plugs it to the internet and participates maliciously in some public protocol, trying to take advantage of its security holes while it is pretending to be a fair player, it is a hijacked laptop in my terminology!

Our current state in computing technology, gives unlimited access to the owner (and the army of crackers, hardware manufacturers, state organisations, ...) to install whatever s/he wants without disclosure.

This way people have access to 'things' that can be 'anything' and pretend to be 'something' else! This is totally a mess which security experts, cryptographers, ... are trying to cover it up, both desperately and inefficiently.