Purchasing a license for enterprise GNU/Linux

After recent software update I have found the following message from program glat-client in system logs of some systems:

This copy of GNU/Linux is not activated. See https://gitlab.com/glat-official/howtotell for details.

What does it mean? Should I 'activate' my GNU/Linux copies?

Solution 1:

You should remove this glat-client from your affected systems, and treat this as a potential security compromise.

Looking at the source code repositories for this so-called glat-official, we can see that they are based on the so-called Linux Genuine Advantage, a hoax licensing scheme for Linux which was meant as a parody of Windows Genuine Advantage (a Windows technology in Windows XP that was infamous for annoying legitimate users). Linux Genuine Advantage did not actually do anything, but it appears that someone has made this GLAT have a functional license server. Whoever they are, they might even be trying to collect money from people. If that's the case, it would be more of a scam than a hoax.

In either case, you should investigate how this program got on to your systems, as it may be an indication of security compromise.