🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <16gt78INNfr7@agate.berkeley.edu>, by stolcke@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Andreas Stolcke):
> 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.
> 
There are some other security issues that are relevant. While unprivileged
software may only be able to do anything the user can do, it may do some stuff
that he wouldn't. For instance if the user has access to files that he is not
supposed to show to anyone, running PD software is a risk.