Re: Locking terminals (was Re: New Princeton Policy)

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Article #362

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#362

From: Mark Lomas
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 14:54

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The technique that I favour, and which has been adopted by at least two
workstation vendors, is to provide a key sequence that restarts the server
that is driving the console.  The code to recognise this key sequence should
be embedded in the device driver in such a position that it cannot be
switched off under any circumstances.

First, if the server hangs you can restart it without something as drastic
as a reboot.  Second, if somebody writes their own version of the lock
utility then you can defeat it without the attendant risk that you gain
access to their account.  Third, you can ensure that nobody is running a
program that masquerades as the login utility.

Thus this solution has the side-effect of improving system security.

	Mark Lomas (tmal@cl.cam.ac.uk)

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!cam-cl!cl.cam.ac.uk!tmal
From: tmal@cl.cam.ac.uk (Mark Lomas)
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Subject: Re: Locking terminals (was Re: New Princeton Policy)
Message-ID: <1992Sep15.145424.28448@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Sep 92 14:54:24 GMT
Sender: news@cl.cam.ac.uk (The news facility)
Reply-To: tmal@cl.cam.ac.uk (Mark Lomas)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK
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