Wine 6.6 Released With Better Plug & Play Driver Support

[jrch2k8]

I'm not going to read this wall of text because it again contains nothing but speculation and absurd claims e.g. "everything closed source that runs at the kernel level must be malware".

I have my share of precautions but at the same time I'm OK with Denuvo. There are bright hackers out there who, I bet, have long disassembled the Windows kernel driver and found nothing in it 'cause otherwise it would have been a major fiasco and a blow to the company. You surely have never run any serious business to say such things. Also, absolute most governments and intelligence agencies of the world run closed-source Windows and have no qualms about it. You on the other hand keep the secrets of the universe on your PC, so you know better. Oh wait.

There's this thing called "presumption of innocence" - please always remember about it. Also, there's this other thing called "Occam's razor" which helps deal with conspiracies.

About the Windows kernel there has been several cases tho nothing as grave as Microsoft is selling your credit card number to hackers but more in the line of of data mining which is why the EU(among other) ending forcing them to the current user aware approach of Windows 10(probes and court cases are still coming and going tho)

Government and intelligence agencies including corporation related to national security, energy, etc. have specific contracts and legal bindings with Microsoft and for those clients Microsoft allows under NDA full security audits and specific patching and even source code requests for auditing. Also each government have specific security normative Microsoft have to abide if they want those huge contracts (don't ask me what is exactly different tho outside encryption algorithms but i know China Russia and the US have specific government editions of Windows).

Also note that at least the US government and Russia(i do assume China and everyone else does the same) uses hardware with specific security modifications like custom TPM2 chips and off the civilian market bio-metric scanners and validated CPU microcode (Well Russia and China use their own hardware but Intel also have agreements with them for this stuff)

Quote:

"Windows 10 is the most secure version of Windows ever, and we’re humbled that governments around the world and now the Chinese government has a version of Windows created specifically for it. We are committed to work tirelessly to meet their needs."

I don't have any secret of the universe at hand (i keep those on hard paper, old school baby) but i don't have enough money to handle been hacked and getting my bank account cleaned neither i think i would like to have my source code from work appearing on Github or have someone monitoring my PC to know at which hours i'm at home so he can kidnap me(quite a common criminal strategy here in South America), etc.

Also presumption of innocence does not make you innocent by default, but assume innocence until the evidence produce a result to either side and like in software money can make a huge difference in the outcome too.

[birdie]

...

I'm not going to read this wall of text because it again contains nothing but speculation and absurd claims e.g. "everything closed source that runs at the kernel level must be malware".

I have my share of precautions but at the same time I'm OK with Denuvo. There are bright hackers out there who, I bet, have long disassembled the Windows kernel driver and found nothing in it 'cause otherwise it would have been a major fiasco and a blow to the company. You surely have never run any serious business to say such things. Also, absolute most governments and intelligence agencies of the world run closed-source Windows and have no qualms about it. You on the other hand keep the secrets of the universe on your PC, so you know better. Oh wait.

There's this thing called "presumption of innocence" - please always remember about it. Also, there's this other thing called "Occam's razor" which helps deal with conspiracies.

[jrch2k8]

You're good at speculation, conspiracies, wearing tinfoil hats and just pure BS. Now, again is there anything proven? Because according to you anything (closed-source) that runs at the kernel level is malware. Which also mans that Windows, MacOS/iOS and Android are all malware by definition because they contain closed source binary drivers written by God knows whom. Sorry, I'm not going to argue with this madness.

I just wonder how do you wake up in the morning knowing that your PC runs closed source EFI firmware, and you most likely have firmware for your GPU, SSD, NIC, WiFi card and in some cases your sound card.



You should have started with "any closed source software is a virus, lol". So many tinfoil hats wearers here, LMAO.

Well none of my points are speculation, since you can easily check what is different between execution levels and runtime levels.

Also again lack of proof is not prove of innocence without a proper investigation and the issue with closed software is that can easily delay or halt any investigation through a very complex set of litigious plays for years as long as you have money to keep at it(many corporations were infamous for this like Microsoft and Oracle for example).

Also yes any closed software is in principle a risk which is why big corporations and governments require security audits before or after purchase along a huge set of bothersome legal guarantees, so this is really an issue for regular folk without any actual power to get those results(or the same audited product).

The only choice we all really have is to either take the risk because the product offer more benefit than any probable downfall or not take the risk and discard said product, yes in my case i decided the latter and i use Linux/BSD(my last Windows installation was probably windows Me) even tho i'm aware other part of the system could be vulnerable(like firmware as you mentioned) for me it reduces the risk significantly enough to make it acceptable.

In your specific response i don't actually get where all this tinfoil hat thing is coming from (i guess you are not into the technical side) but your assertion was Denuvo is safe because link and my response is simply that it should never be assumed something is safe without hard proof because technically speaking even open source software can be insecure and work perfectly fine and be recognized as safe simply because nobody bother to audit it and that link had technical information that is not accurate and that is all i care about.

So, if you took your precautions and have no issues with Denuvo that is 100% fine with me, after all it does not affect me in any way but other people deserve to have proper information and understand there is a risk so as you did, they can make their choice properly informed.

[fafreeman]

Last time I checked Half-Life was available on Steam Play/Linux (1, 2 and Black Mesa). Why would you try to play the Windows version on Wine?

Fixing anything windows related, regardless if there is a linux version of that program, is still good because it can help other stuff. Or at least cause the developers to learn more about the underlying system that can improve something else later on.

If this is about software renders for half-life, then it might help them with other windows only programs that use software renders, etc.

[ix900]

You should have started with "any closed source software is a virus, lol". So many tinfoil hats wearers here, LMAO.

Maybe if sarcastic in that kind of way but I have no problems with closed source or open source so it never crossed my mind. Not everything needs to be open source.

[birdie]

Is a bunch of stuff anyone can research but to name few

1.) Ring 3 and 0 have huge differences in capacities unlike stated
2.) userspace and kernel levels also have a myriad of differences and scopes for an attack
3.) Ring 0 is an extremely dangerous place to run anything, specially a closed BLOB
4.) Denuvo can literally do anything and without a very deep security audit would be extremely hard to prove anything(because is operating inside ring 0 or lower) and since its commercial software to reach that level you probably need a huge amount of money on lawyers and some years to reach the point an CVE actually exists unless they want to like Microsoft or Apple do.
5.) The fact you cannot prove is doing anything illegal it does not imply is not doing anything illegal and you should always assume so unless you can factually prove is indeed not doing anything illegal(this is the most basic concept for cyber security), specially something running at a lower execution ring since no regular tool can be trusted to detect said illegal activity in the first place.

In the end promote trust on something that run on a lower execution ring(or even regular ones) because you think is a witch hunt(and whatever else he said) because there is no proof of wrongdoing is extremely naive

You're good at speculation, conspiracies, wearing tinfoil hats and just pure BS. Now, again is there anything proven? Because according to you anything (closed-source) that runs at the kernel level is malware. Which also mans that Windows, MacOS/iOS and Android are all malware by definition because they contain closed source binary drivers written by God knows whom. Sorry, I'm not going to argue with this madness.

I just wonder how do you wake up in the morning knowing that your PC runs closed source EFI firmware, and you most likely have firmware for your GPU, SSD, NIC, WiFi card and in some cases your sound card.

Kaspersky is a virus lol. It probably does far worse than Denuvo. Talk about extra code, attaching itself every way possible, using your computer's resources, removing things on you, causing problems lol. Denuvo isn't even that bad.

You should have started with "any closed source software is a virus, lol". So many tinfoil hats wearers here, LMAO.

[ix900]

https://www.geeksultd.com/2020/05/ka...vo-as-malware/

birdie sorry to say Denuvo has been labeled Malware many different times. The way Denuvo operates allowing remote command and control server to-do a lot of things without user approval does put it in a questionable area.

Kaspersky is a virus lol. It probably does far worse than Denuvo. Talk about extra code, attaching itself every way possible, using your computer's resources, removing things on you, causing problems lol. Denuvo isn't even that bad. Kaspersky should flag themselves as malware and a virus.

Last time I checked Half-Life was available on Steam Play/Linux (1, 2 and Black Mesa). Why would you try to play the Windows version on Wine?

Wine does solve the problem of when native fails to work properly. That's really the whole point to Wine when native doesn't work. Native from other OS is no different. Wine may allow it to work.

There are also times when native can be slower and be worse because of issues. Wine also solves that.

[oiaohm]

An idiotic correction. Denuvo is DRM, not malware. Malware is something which actively harms your PC or life whuke Denuvo does nothing aside from making it harder to steal something it protects.

https://www.geeksultd.com/2020/05/kaspersky-labels-denuvo-as-malware/

birdie sorry to say Denuvo has been labeled Malware many different times. The way Denuvo operates allowing remote command and control server to-do a lot of things without user approval does put it in a questionable area.

[jrch2k8]

I disagree with point 5. It could be said I am arguing semantics, but the distinction is important, You should assume that it CAN, not that it IS. That is the difference between not using something at all, and implementing proper protections to prevent it from possibly doing something. IE. containerization.

True but in the case of Windows and Denuvo specifically, it could bypass containerization and perhaps even hypervisors(if we assume their promise of stopping at ring 0 is false), so yeah is very complex situation which is why i preferred IS to CAN in this context since i'm more the better safe than sorry kinda guy. Hence i always assume a 60/40 approach about IS and CAN respectively to be on the safeish side but you POV is also totally correct

[Quackdoc]

Is a bunch of stuff anyone can research but to name few

1.) Ring 3 and 0 have huge differences in capacities unlike stated
2.) userspace and kernel levels also have a myriad of differences and scopes for an attack
3.) Ring 0 is an extremely dangerous place to run anything, specially a closed BLOB
4.) Denuvo can literally do anything and without a very deep security audit would be extremely hard to prove anything(because is operating inside ring 0 or lower) and since its commercial software to reach that level you probably need a huge amount of money on lawyers and some years to reach the point an CVE actually exists unless they want to like Microsoft or Apple do.
5.) The fact you cannot prove is doing anything illegal it does not imply is not doing anything illegal and you should always assume so unless you can factually prove is indeed not doing anything illegal(this is the most basic concept for cyber security), specially something running at a lower execution ring since no regular tool can be trusted to detect said illegal activity in the first place.

In the end promote trust on something that run on a lower execution ring(or even regular ones) because you think is a witch hunt(and whatever else he said) because there is no proof of wrongdoing is extremely naive

I disagree with point 5. It could be said I am arguing semantics, but the distinction is important, You should assume that it CAN, not that it IS. That is the difference between not using something at all, and implementing proper protections to prevent it from possibly doing something. IE. containerization.