Russian Government Planning To Replace All Of Its Windows Computers With Linux

Short Bytes: The Russian government is planning to replace all of its Windows-powered computers with some Linux distribution. The government has justified this decision by stating that American technology companies like Google and Microsoft need to pay more taxes.

It seems that Russian government is planning to switch over to the Linux-powered computers in all of its government offices. The government probably is making this move betting on an unknown GNU/Linux distribution.
This was revealed during a recent interview when Russian government’s German Klimenko targeted American companies like Microsoft and Google, demanding that they should pay more taxes. During the interview, Mr. Klimenko said that now is the right time to replace Microsoft Windows with Linux operating system.

Microsoft’s Windows is the most used operating system in Russia. The government is planning to paint about 22,000 municipal authorities in the color of Linux. While Windows 10 was already facing flak in Russia over privacy issues, adoption of an open source alternative to Microsoft Windows is expected to deliver a big blow to the big guys at Redmond.

In the past, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has expressed his wish to move to open source software and adoption of a Linux-based operating system by 2015.

It would be interesting to see which Linux OS Russia is planning to adopt. Stay tuned with us, we’ll be keeping you updated about this big win of the open source philosophy.

Also Read: Meet The Fast And Beautiful Cub Linux 1.0

SOURCES: FOSSBYTES

Hackers can bypass HTTPS protection on Windows, Linux and Mac PCs

HTTPS bypass allows hackers to snoop on Windows, Linux, and Mac users’ browsing habits

One of the main reason why all of us trust websites with HTTPS is because the surfing on such sites is invisible to hackers. Most of us are taught to believe that websites with HTTPS encryption are hacker and snooping proof. However, researchers have devised an attack that breaks this protection and bypasses the HTTPS protection allowing potential hackers to spy on you.

The attack works by bypassing the HTTPS encryption which is supposed to prevent this happening. HTTPS would normally prevent the operator seeing the URLs visited by users, but a new technique abuses Web Proxy Autodiscovery  and exposes browser requests to any code the network owner wants plug in. The bypass attack is specifically dangerous for those Windows, Linux and Mac users who use public Wi-Fi and public hotspots. The HTTPS bypass can also be used by your ISP provider to snoop directly on you without your knowledge.

Itzik Kotler, CTO and co-founder, and Amit Klein, VP of security research, at security firm SafeBreach will demonstrate how the attack works at next week’s Black Hat conference in a talk entitled Crippling HTTPS with Unholy PAC.

“People rely on HTTPS to secure their communication even when the LAN/Wi-Fi cannot be trusted (think public Wi-Fi/hotels/cafes/airports/restaurants, or compromised LAN in an organization),” Itzik Kotler, cofounder and CTO of security firm SafeBreach and one of the scheduled speakers, wrote in an e-mail. “We show that HTTPS cannot provide security when WPAD is enabled. Therefore, a lot of people are actually exposed to this attack when they engage in browsing via non-trusted networks.”

So next time you think browsing on a HTTPS-enabled website makes your browsing safe and private, do give this post a thought!

SOURCES: TECHWORM