Small-time admins maybe. If one works as part of a larger team, automation and documentation is king - any such backdoors would get anyone into trouble, quick.

Just write them onto tape, and wait a few years until GPUs are even better at cracking or a bug has been found in TrueCrypt (remember, the first audit is only starting now).

Our business data is pretty darn sensitive. There is no way we could possibly trust a 3rd party to actually store it - and I'm pretty sure a lot of other business are that way too.

I also fail to see what's so good in "cloud" compared to a reliable off-site backup solution...

...with the company that specializes in data mining!

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Good for you. Me myself, I won't put that much more trust into the ability of looking at a source that's many thousands pages long and so utterly complicated it would take a team of experts to fully audit; also one that may or may not be the same software I wound up with. Theoretical possbilities I have no real means to use are that: theoretical possibilities.

If you are that paranoid, do what I do. Install a network filter at your endpoint and analyze your own traffic. That's the only way to be sure, unless the network filter/analyzer themselves are bugged. But that's a risk I'll live with.

(Now, I also value open source for some of its merits - long-term maintainabilitiy, the biggest among them. But that doesn't mean blind and exclusive faith, imho.)

You say let the user decide... but that's a ridicolously bankrupt concept. If some of the users weren't wanting to cheat, we wouldn't need VAC in the first place. By allowing the user to do the same poisonous behaviour they do today, you simply didn't change anything! Legit players will still need VAC, and VAC will still need underhanded methods to catch software that also operate unethically.

I agree on the OS part anyway; the OSes that are popular today were designed very, very long ago. But, that's something we'll have to live with for a good while. Designing an OS that would prohibit "super access" for any app by design... while nice in theory, would also require putting together completely new ones. And that's a lot of effort... so I guess we won't really get to see them for a while. Not to mention the inertia that - similarly to any other industry - is present in IT.

Anyway, permissions. You say you give those things permission. Fine. Permission for what? Scan you RAM? Your full HD? Basic requirements as far as antivirus softwares go... but that's way worse than browsing your DNS entries, right there! And some of those scan results will wind up in some global database, or else new virus definitions couldn't be made. So, how do you know what gets reported and how? Will you keep checking the source for all your antivirus apps? Every patch, every commit?

Ah, I think you misunderstood me; I was approaching from the other angle. My point was: since all desktop OSes today give apps free reign - stuff like VAC is neccesary. Just like anti-malware, anti-rootkit, etc softwares - all of them neccesary in the given environment, even if it'd nice not having them running in the background 24/7.

Even Android - a relatively secure linux with some seperation between processes - will gladly allow you to mess around with any process, once you are root. So if you want to alter a process (inject cheat into a game, say)... then it won't stop you.

I understand the theory of having a properly compartmentalized OS (hypervisor running only completely sandboxed apps, etc), and I wouldn't mind having one. But, the thing is: we don't. Not in a state where they could run the majority of the apps we need an OS for today, anyway. Even so, we still want to play games. And without cheaters ruining it for all us, if possible.

Interesting. So, out of curiosity... what do you use to keep your *nix box safe? Tripwire?

You could subtitue 98% of Linux and 100% of Windows systems and say the same. You say source - but we both know that if we're paranoid, just looking at the supposed does little good. Any binary you download could have been made from an altered source. So, how many OSes did you compile yourself? Which binary do you trust, and why?

Whether you use those things or not makes little difference as long as the underlying OS allows such things to happen. If people stayed away from VAC in protest, they would only give an absolutely free reign to cheaters who don't give a hoot about such ethical concerns.

This is a technical answer to a technical problem. Or do you have a better solution, short of no-one playing multiplayer on servers they don't host themselves?

I hope you don't run any anti-virus/malware software either, then. Because, you know, they use almost exactly the same methods (RAM, registry, full HDD scan and reporting home) for exactly the same ends - that is, preventing software they deem harmful from running.

If you hate software poking around your RAM, running processes etc, then you can already wave goodbye to multiplayer - almost every anti-cheat service is doing those now (and need to, given the arms race between cheat software and cheat detection).

Unless you don't mind rampant cheating, that is. But if that's indeed no biggie, then I wish you an enjoyable stay in wallhack-land.

Barring a ridicolous lack of common sense, just why would you start your own VAC secure server if you intend to cheat anyway?

If something on your PC is calling home to some cheat-DRM address (not forum, not discussion board, not even a frikken' download site)... then you are probably not a false positive, though.

Sure you can. Just don't connect to VAC secured servers.