Is Linux creating a new breed of Hackers ?

["Chakrabarti, Suvendra (CTS)" <CSUVENDRA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well this is not an essay competition, and as such does not carry any
prize money. ;-) If you really feel that this mailing list is not intended
for
anything as generic as this, pls. ignore this mail (with my apologies).

Before Linus and his team of hackers threw open the source of the kernel
to the world, the kernel had always been a mystery, known only to a select
group of people (Remember mode X and the game programmers efforts to
keep it a secret ?). There had been a few books describing the kernel, and
also some went on giving codes for a small working kernel. That's all.
Nothing of anything as serious in nature as the Linux kernel.

Suddenly everything changed. The code for the kernel lay bare. GNU/Linux
with its efforts for open source, gave the kernel to the world. Of course it
was
copylefted to Linus !! Anyone with an active knowledge of C, and a good
knowledge of Assembler, internals could easily manipulate the code, and
hack it down. And of course find the bugs in the code which can be
manipulated.

If this manipulation is for gaining knowledge, and not harming any remote
systems,
it would do a hell lot of good to the Linux itself, which really it did. But
few chose
the other way, and well today Linux is the most hacked system, maybe in some
cases causing harm.

Even before a bug in the kernel is discovered and patched, it has been
explored 
by some remote hacker. So with this abundant hacking, can the users be safe
with Linux ? Is there a way out of this catch ?

BTW, I am not against open sourcing the softwares. ;-)

Suvendra

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