🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jun14.132933.4466@news.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>   Nothing stupid at all about having publically accessible guest accounts.

Read on.

>If you have a guest account, you expect guests to use it.  That's why it's
>called a "guest" account.  Much like having an anonymous FTP set up, you
>have it there for people to use it.

Shouldn't you know who your "guests" are?  If so, why not create
(temporary) accounts for them outright, instead of mucking around with
a single account named "guest" that's just _asking_ to be messed with?

The analogy with anonymous FTP breaks down when you consider that in
the latter, your capabilities are strictly circumscribed by the FTP
protocol, whereas with a "guest" account, the sky's the limit, once
the user has circumvented any roadblocks you've thrown in his/her way.

>But if you make the point that you don't want people hacking on this account
>and that there isn't much on the machine that's worthwhile, you shouldn't
>have a problem.

Not true.  Ever heard of "distributed password-cracking"?  Access to
your machine itself is a valuable resource to a sufficiently
enlightened user, especially since distributed processing is all the
rage now, in more ways than one.....

>		That's not to say that you don't keep a good eye on what's
>going on there to make sure that there aren't any problems, but that's what
>system administration is all about, folks.

Well, there's enough problems to worry about without leaving my back
door wide open, so I'll pass on "guest" accounts, thank you.