Quote from: murraypaul on August 26, 2014, 08:53:45 PM

Quote from: ArticMine on August 26, 2014, 08:20:44 PM

Actually coins that are mined with ASICS and FPGAS are not vulnerable since these devices run GNU/Linux.

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/isp-bitcoin-theft/
Enough devices were redirected to mine ~$83,000 worth of coins.

Quote

GNU/Linux is FLOSS and also has enough GPLv3 code deep inside the OS to ensure that the owner of the has to be provided with root access.

So much wrong.
There is no GPLv3-only code 'deep inside the OS', because Linux is licensed under GPLv2.
And there are millions of linux based devices out there for which the owner has not been provided with root access.

This is a case where the distinction between GNU/Linux the operating system and Linux the kernel is critical. The advent of Android as an alternative to GNU has made the old Stallman/Torvalds polemic highly relevant here. Linux the kernel is GPL v2, but a host of critical OS components in GNU/Linux starting with parts of the GNU toolchain are GPL v3. Android combined with certain BSD tools can be used to create operating systems using the Linux kernel that are subject to tivoization by avoiding the GPL v3 components. If one loosely refers to both kinds of operating systems as "Linux" then confusion will occur. One should also keep in mind that old versions of GNU/Linux 2007 and earlier that preceded the GPL v3 are of course also subject to tivoization. The latter is the reason why Amazon moved from GNU/Linux to Android/Linux for the Kindle after the release of the GPL v3. DRM infections in order to delete works such as George Orwell's 1984 do not work on recent versions of GNU/Linux and Amazon wished to keep the option to control and manipulate its customers.

The Canadian ISP hack attack is a different issue. There again the choice of an ISP is critical. The article does not identify the ISP culprit. The one thing I know here is that avoiding Rogers as an ISP is the prudent thing to do. We recently saw a Canadian Bitcoin exchange hacked because of the incompetence of Rogers at the data centre level.