🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <eronald.726016050@ruble>, eronald@fml.tuwien.ac.at (Edmund Ronald) writes:
>  Several people remarked that virues on Unix machines were "impossible"
>because of the access control separating accounts. No one bothered to 
>remember that the past ten years have proven Unix system security to be an
>oxymoron, a topic that keeps graduate students entertained nights. In fact,
>if I may venture some sarcasm, if administrators and vendors did not make
>such exagerated claims about Unix security, then there would probably be
>fewer attacks :)

The main problem with Unix security is that there are a lot of holes to
plug. The system administrator can make a unix system fairly secure,
placing the weak point with the users, but you have to really be careful
about programs that run setuid, protections on all files, and other such
issues.

One may ask how easy it is to make a unix system secure, and I agree that
it is not easy to make a system that is used by a lot of users for various
sophisticated tasks secure. Additionally, unix being so widely distributed
and talked about has a hard time relying on "security through obscurity",
since any hole will get talked about. I do wonder how much more secure
other OS's are, where the ability to keep a security hole quiet is a bit
easier.

-- 
    Martin Terman, Mutant for Hire, Mean Ol' Top, Priest of Shub-Internet
    Disclaimer: Nobody else takes me seriously, why should you be the first?
mfterman@phoenix.princeton.edu mfterman@pucc.bitnet terman@pupgga.princeton.edu
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