🚀 go-pugleaf

jeffo@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (J.B. Nicholson-Owens) writes:

>And while I'm asking this, does 3.0 come with the changes that they
>say are 'secure' versus 2.1 insecure features (the things I'm speaking
>of are listed in the SysAdmin manual)?  Why, if these things are
>known, would NeXT choose to ship insecure machines?
There are good reasons that standalone machines would want to be set
up the way that NeXT ships them.  You could go through each thing
that is mentioned in the infamous Chapter 16 and find a reason that
it is shipped that way.  By the way, if you read Chapter 16, it
always tells why one would want the insecure behavour.
A few (I'm basically quoting out of the manual):
Why is / 1777 ?  Plenty of people like to make directories off of
their root without having to become root to do this.  Maybe they
'shouldn't', but it isn't that big of a deal when you are the only
one who uses this machine.
Why is PrintManager setuid root?  So you can delete print jobs,
regardless of who created them.  
Why is Preferences setuid root?  So that you can change the time
without having to log in as root, which people shouldn't be doing
all the time anyway.
Why isn't trusted_networks already set?  It would be impossible for
them to know which networks I want to trust!
etc...

There are somethings that a system administrator has to do.  
No system ships their system competely impenetrable... Sun still
ships machines with a '+' in the /etc/hosts.equiv.  (I wonder
whether they will still do so with Solaris 2.0, if it ever comes
out...)
The fact that NeXT documents these 'holes' sure is nice.  The other
holes that are fairly important have been issued through CERT
advisories and NeXT has remedied them (rdist, for example...which
hit almost every BSD system  anywhere).
-- 
David Lemson                                                 (217) 244-1205
University of Illinois NeXT Campus Consultant  / CCSO NeXT Lab System Admin
Internet : lemson@uiuc.edu                 UUCP :...!uiucuxc!uiucux1!lemson 
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