🚀 go-pugleaf

Joe Sloan (jjs@dostoevsky.ucr.edu) wrote:
: Nevin ":-]" Liber <nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU> wrote:

: >Yea, and the Internet Worm never happened, too. :-(

: If memory serves me correctly, unix hackers had a handle on the problem
: within hours of it's outbreak, that being possible because of the open
: nature of unix. Are you advocating "security thru obscurity"? That is a 
: truly bogus (and naive) way of thinking...

Don't forget that the "open nature of unix" is what makes it so 
vulnerable to hacking by exploiting bugs.

You might also remember that the Worm took advantage of a *known* bug in 
sendmail, and that the systems that got hit by the Worm were the ones 
that hadn't addressed the problem... Makes you wonder just how many 
machines have been patched to fix sendmail.  I know that as of six months 
after the Worm, someone did an informal poll and found that over ten 
percent of the unix admins had fixed the sendmail bug on their machines.

"Computer Security" seems to be an oxymoron in the modern world.  The 
only way to get a really secure computer is to encrypt the hard drive, 
password-protect the machine in hardware, turn it off, unplug it, lock it 
in a closet, and burn down the building... and there's *still* no 
guarantees. 
-- 

Chad Irby           /    My greatest fear: that future generations will,
cirby@gate.net     /      for some reason, refer to me as an "optimist."