[techtalk] Re: techtalk digest, Vol 1 #449 - 9 msgs

[James Sutherland]

On Sat, 12 May 2001, Linda MacPhee-Cobb wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I don't think you'll convince me this is anything but a disaster.  I don't
> think turning my linux passwords into the equivalent of Win 95, not even Nt,
> passwords to be anything but bad.

This isn't the case, as we have already explained.

> I just went to a friend's house a few weeks ago and put win2000, bios
> passwords, no boot but from hd, so they can stop their teen sons from
> downloading porn.  These children know a bit, but not enough to work around
> that.

You can achieve precisely the same results with Linux, as I explained
earlier. (The "stop their teen sons from downloading porn" is pretty
difficult on any platform without blocking all WWW access, but that's
another matter...)

> No one is trying to protect from the nsa here.

Indeed: the NSA are on our side (i.e. contributing to Linux's security
system, since they use it internally).

> Anyone with sufficient time, motivation, and skill will find a way in,
> same as to your home.  What has been done is to make root access
> available for anyone with a few minutes and a bit of luck on a web
> search.

If the sysadmin is mind-numbingly stupid to the point of not reading any
of the multitude of WWW pages, manpages and HOWTOs which mention this AND
HOW TO DISABLE IT IF REQUIRED, yes. Otherwise, no.

> In idiot proofing the system it has been comprimised to idiots.

No, it just looks that way to those who haven't read the documentation. Or
listened to our explanations why it isn't a compromise.


James.
-- 
"Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big
system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'"

"TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make
any difference if it takes a while to fix it."
		-- Ken Olson, in Digital News, 1988