Re: Of mice and men


In article <irUee.3045$w15.2716@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "jce" <defaultuser@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Someone could download something, install something as a root user and be
> _totally_ oblivious to the fact that now their machine has a security hole.
> Or is that impossible? Maybe they've fixed this up now, I don't hack so I
> don't really know.

Making it impossible for the superuser on a Unix system to create
security holes would make that OS no longer Unix. While some Unix
variants have reduced superuser privileges in limited ways (eg the
"immutable" file permissions bit), creating a "perfectly secure"
superuser would result in an OS that didn't even resemble Unix, much
less conform to the standard.

Unix isn't perfectly secure. It's not even very secure, compared to,
say, Plan 9 or OS/400 (when those are administered correctly). It's
often more secure than Windows, because Windows is often used in a
completely insecure manner.

And yes, users are often the weakest link. They assign trust where
it isn't warranted. They have poor data hygiene. They're susceptible
to social engineering. They're careless, forgetful, lazy; they take
shortcuts. They're frequently confused or wrong about proper security
practices. They're often deliberately malicious.

--
Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"We are facing a dire shortage of clowns," said Erickson, also known as
Jingles.
.

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