mbkennel@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Matthew B. Kennel) (10/17/88)
If the optical disks on the Next machine are removable and writable, then presumably the user of such a machine can write to his disk and basically give himself root privileges. In that case, in a networked environment, he can pretend to be any other user. How does a mail server, for example, know that a specific userid is actually logged on to some node, or if it's some hacker masqureading as the user? Encryption/decryption of all files? Same goes for remotely mounted volumes. I'm sure this problem has been looked at before, but the Next computer seems like it will be the first time that this will be a prevalent problem. Most Sun or Apollo clusters generally run diskless, or at least with some central userid clearing house. But apparently Jobs want you to be able to take your disk with all your work on it to any Next machine you can find: this is very different from most present workstation clusters, and would seem to make validation very difficult. Matt Kennel mbkennel@phoenix.princeton.edu
debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra) (10/17/88)
In article <4006@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> mbkennel@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Matthew B. Kennel) writes: >If the optical disks on the Next machine are removable and writable, >then presumably the user of such a machine can write to his disk and >basically give himself root privileges. >... >I'm sure this problem has been looked at before, but the Next computer seems >like it will be the first time that this will be a prevalent problem. > Wrong: the AT, the Mac II, and any other system with removable storage basically provides the same problems. One can boot these machines from floppies with g*d knows what (suid) programs on them. Any network that has workstations with removable media is subject to this problem. Backup cartridges are not much more secure than floppies either (though writing a working bootable file system on a tape is usually a little more difficult). Paul. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |debra@research.att.com | uunet!research!debra | att!grumpy!debra | -------------------------------------------------------------------------