I fail to see how all this will protect you from some backdoor in binary only outlook. Since the sources of outlook are not available, paranoid people need to assume the worst.
Same goes for opensource products. Look at all the security flaws that are found on a weekly basis. Pine was opensource yet it had several long term security flaws....
1. You have the sources of pine. You can audit it and fix it if needed
Then why did these problems escape notice for so long?
2. There are alternatives to pine (eg mutt) 3. You don't know what security flaws are in outlook. There might even be intentional ones. But maybe you have some special deal with Microsoft...
You don't know what security flaws are still present in pine.
That is a lame excuse. If you are really interested in having this functionality in Linux, help work on it ;) But blindly trusting some binary only program (especially from Microsoft) sounds very strange to me.
No it's not lame. I need that functionality. It doesn't yet exist in Linux. I don't have the time or inclination to code it myself.
Kurt Seifried, seifried@securityportal.com Securityportal - your focal point for security on the 'net ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Don't get me wrong. I do not intend to offend you. But claiming to care about security and at the same time using binary only software for really critical and sensitive things makes it quite hard for lots of people to take you seriously.
This binary only software argument is somewhat bogus in my opinion. I write a weekly linux and bsd digests, they have more then their share of security problems.
-o) Hubert Mantel Goodbye, dots... /\\
Kurt Seifried, seifried@securityportal.com Securityportal - your focal point for security on the 'net