You can't trust your computer. Modern systems are opaque black boxes with countless attack vectors – firmware backdoors, CPU vulnerabilities, supply chain compromises, telemetry you can't disable, and software that updates itself without your consent.
Your OS vendor tracks everything. Your hardware manufacturer has backdoors. Your ISP logs your traffic. Three-letter agencies have zero-days. Even "secure" chips like TPMs have been compromised. The entire stack from silicon to application is fundamentally untrustworthy.
But it's possible to achieve reasonable trust through extreme measures: Full disk encryption, verified boot chains, network isolation, hardened Linux distributions, open-source everything, regular security audits, and controlling every component in your stack. You'll sacrifice convenience for security, but if you truly need trustworthy computing, that's the price.
Linux gives you the foundation – full source code visibility, no hidden telemetry, complete control over your system. Combined with proper OpSec and paranoid configuration, you can build something trustworthy. Most people won't do this because it's hard work, but for those who need real security, there's no alternative.
Your OS vendor tracks everything. Your hardware manufacturer has backdoors. Your ISP logs your traffic. Three-letter agencies have zero-days. Even "secure" chips like TPMs have been compromised. The entire stack from silicon to application is fundamentally untrustworthy.
But it's possible to achieve reasonable trust through extreme measures: Full disk encryption, verified boot chains, network isolation, hardened Linux distributions, open-source everything, regular security audits, and controlling every component in your stack. You'll sacrifice convenience for security, but if you truly need trustworthy computing, that's the price.
Linux gives you the foundation – full source code visibility, no hidden telemetry, complete control over your system. Combined with proper OpSec and paranoid configuration, you can build something trustworthy. Most people won't do this because it's hard work, but for those who need real security, there's no alternative.
Ref.:
https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=44708110