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Comment by Balinares | Hacker News Reader

You might not be up to date on how this works.

The OS installation images come from Microsoft. They're the same amount of malware as the OS that comes preinstalled on your laptop. Probably a tad less, depending on the brand.

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So instead of downloading the OS, you're downloading a patching executable? How do you trust this? Is it open source and auditable? Otherwise you're opening yourself up to the same concerns.

No, you download a powershell script which computes a couple of strings and calls a couple of commands. The code is not obfuscated.

What about the crack executable?

It's free and open-source.

and hosted on github

which is owned by Microsoft lol

I would think that'd be exactly the sort of thing which is explicitly prohibited from github/lab/etc

It is, but it's like one of those situations where they won't report a thief to the police until he's stolen enough to make it a felony.

> and it comes with free malware!

So where is the contradiction?

Probably that one of the original comments on this thread suggested using another free and open source thing instead of using this free and open source thing? Why is linux exempt from "it comes with free malware" and not this other widely trusted and used tool?

Linux is more trusted because there are legions of cybersecurity experts who made their bones combing through the linux codebase to find security exploits. Even if this is open source, how can I be sure someone has audited it?

Alternatively I could pay what is, for me, a pittance, and know that my OS is not compromised.

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