These day we are seeing tremendous increase in revealing of several malware attacks are embedded in our hardware by different secret services, I think its time for a new revolution as per today's need and its the Open source Hardware.
In 1994 Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds started a revolution by giving this world Open Source and soon the most secure, trust able, customisable operating system Linux was introduced. It was important because market was dominated by Microsoft for our need of operating system people had no option rather than to use windows.
In 1994 Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds started a revolution by giving this world Open Source and soon the most secure, trust able, customisable operating system Linux was introduced. It was important because market was dominated by Microsoft for our need of operating system people had no option rather than to use windows.
Well this is the time where we need another revolution by the name of open hardware because now we can not trust our regular manufacturers of IT equipments because they get involve in dirty work of violating people life's privacy by creating and embedding security holes in the firmware of there hardware products.
This needs to be stopped
wikipedia definition of open source hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open designmovement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardware is created by this open-source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH (free and open source hardware).
why?
what reason can be given after this year since the 2013 Snowden leaks, Russian security firm Kaspersky has presented a report that the National Security Agency (NSA), the snooping agency for the United States has been involved in a globally-organised hacking campaign aimed at the firmware of hard drives.
Kaspersky report says that NSA implemented a backdoor in the firmware of hard drives, this backdoor is a complex algorithm that can give direct access to all data stored in drive to any remote user, not only this this algorithm can even produce a small malware from itself that system thread level that can do lot more then just access file it can send them and more.Hard drives manufactured by as many as 12 major HD manufacturers are currently infected. The operation has been dubbed as “Equation Group” by researchers of Kaspersky Lab and took help of hackers to secretly intercept a package in transit, booby-trapped its contents, and sent it to its intended destination. Kaspersky had dubbed the group as Equation Group because it is apparent use of heavy encryption tools and algorithm's, obfuscation methods and advanced delivery mechanism of the communication.
Kaspersky report notes that somewhere in mid 2002 or 2003, Equation Group members used the Oracle database installation CD to infect multiple targets with malware from the group’s extensive library.
As per Kaspersky the number of victims of this cyber snooping operating can range in ‘tens of thousands of victims’ in over 42 countries spread around the world. NSA apparently used this method to infect PCs primarily in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Syria and Mali at the top of the list.
The NSA victims centred in critical fields including aerospace, nuclear research, government, telecommunications, Islamic activists, energy, and industries, financial concerns, encryption technologies and infrastructure supply chains. Kaspersky researchers say it is difficult to arrive at a absolute number of infections done by the Equation Group because of a self-destruct mechanism built into the malware. so if anyone tries to fetch it out of drives for reverse engineering or other purpose it destroyes itself completely.
After all these events open hardware will help people to trust there system and be tension free that no one has private access to our data
there many more such hardware backhood implanted by NSA if you want a list visit this wiki page
So who is manufacoring opensource hardware well here is a small list but this not all this industry needs a initiative in open hardware along with innovations to boost up the current senarios of sales and prooducts.
Computer open source hardware list
- Ben NanoNote – handheld notebook computer based on a MIPS processor running Linux.
- Chumby – "ambient" information device.
- CUBIT (multi-touch) System – Open-source multitouch surface-interaction system.
- Novena (computing_platform) – Open-source Linux computer based on a 1.2 GHz (quad-core) ARM Cortex-A9 and Xilinx FPGA.
- Open Compute Project – Openly share designs of data center products (server, storage, rack, ...).
- Parallax Propeller – a multi-core microcontroller with eight 32-bit RISC cores.
- Purism Librem[2]- 15.6″ laptop with absolutely no proprietary drivers or software.
- SPARC – RISC instruction set architecture (ISA).
- The Bus pirate – Universal bus interface and programmer.
- USB Armory[3] – System on a Chip (SoC) with a Freescale i.MX53 ARM Cortex-A8 800Mhz, 512MB DDR3 RAM and ARM TrustZone secure boot.
If this violation of users privacy continues then may be people will loose faith in all the USA based hardware manufacturer so they better audit there products before that happen.
ITS TIME FOR ANOTHER REVOLUTION "THE OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE" TO PROTECT OUT RIGHT OF INTELLECTUAL PRIVACY AND SECURITY
i think its time when Richard Stallman might need to change his phrase's about open source its not just about software anymore
As the advocates of open source draw new users into our community, we free software activists must shoulder the task of bringing the issue of freedom to their attention. We have to say, “It's free software and it gives you freedom!”—more and louder than ever. Every time you say “free software” rather than “open source,” you help our cause.
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