Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!mike From: mike@istsists.ca (Mike Clarkson) Newsgroups: news.sysadmin Subject: Re: wasted cycles Message-ID: <275@istsists.ca> Date: 30 Nov 88 00:19:50 GMT Article-I.D.: istsists.275 References: <978@hub.ucsb.edu> <16965@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <2661@epimass.EPI.COM> Organization: Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science Lines: 31 In article <2661@epimass.EPI.COM>, jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) writes: ! Something very important should be said about FSF in this regard. The official ! copies of Gnu software are mode 777, deliberately, based on RMS's opposition ! to any notion of security. Already, someone attempting to FTP GNU software ! managed to destroy an important file by specifying FTP arguments in the ! reverse order (he apologized profusely on one of the gnu.* lists). ! ! It would be trivial for anyone on the Internet to install a Trojan horse ! in GNU source code and have it installed everywhere, thereby destroying ! the good names of those involved in FSF. Sharing of information does not ! require that every file be writable by everyone who thinks he knows how ! to operate a computer; most data destruction I've seen is accidental. ! But some is deliberate, so watch out. ! Add to this the temptation to make movemail suid root and you have a system with no security at all. I have often speculated that RMS made Gnu Emacs so large to make sure that no one would notice these two little features that lie burried in 18 Mbytes of code. An effective way of accomplishing his real aim of removing all system security on any machine that installs his software. Mike. -- Mike Clarkson mike@ists.UUCP Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science mike@ists.yorku.ca York University, North York, Ontario, uunet!mnetor!yunexus!ists!mike CANADA M3J 1P3 +1 (416) 736-5611