🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug13.221040.2123@almserv.uucp>, alufml@purple.fnma.com (Francois-Michel Lang) writes:
|> 
|> I just received a tape of the Unix TeX distribution from the
|> Northwest Computing Support Center and handed it over to the
|> sysadmin folks at my site for installation.  Now they tell me
|> that they will *not* install it because TeX is public domain
|> software, which is verboten here.  (Why, given this policy,
|> we can still use GNU Emacs is another matter...)
|> 
|> In an effort to convince the sysadmin folks that installing and
|> running TeX will not destroy the world as we know it:
|> 
|> (1) I'd very much appreciate hearing from anyone who has TeX running
|> at a site where security is a real concern (e.g., military, defense,
|> or government "agencies").  If TeX is safe enough for such sites, it
|> should be safe enough for us!
|> 
|> (2) Has anything been written/published showing/arguing that TeX is
|> indeed safe, and will not introduce the latest and most fiendish
|> viruses into our network?

You said UNIX, not PC, right?  So it should be sufficient to tell your
sysadmin people that TeX doesn't include a single program requiring
setuid/setgid priviledges.  There is no safety issue here because
there is nothing a user can do running TeX he or she couldn't do
using your standard UNIX commands or maybe a C compiler.

People have become so paranoid about security they don't even stop
to think what is really at issue.  When this happens to sysadmin folks
they come up with silly generalizations like "PD software is evil."
What a pity.

-- 
Andreas Stolcke					stolcke@icsi.berkeley.edu
International Computer Science Institute	stolcke@ucbicsi.bitnet
1947 Center St., Suite 600, Berkeley, CA 94704	(510) 642-4274 ext. 126