Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Viruses, DOS versus UNIX (Re: Low Productivity of Knowledge Workers) Message-ID: <1989Oct3.152433.238@twwells.com> Date: 3 Oct 89 15:24:33 GMT References: <9676@venera.isi.edu> <189@crucible.UUCP> <291@voa3.UUCP> <1989Oct2.113810.24146@twwells.com> <6383@ficc.uu.net> Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL Lines: 29 In article <6383@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: : I made the claim that there have been no security holes reported for : System V. : : > What about the one that lets any user trivially truncate the password : > file? And lets the real clever get root access? : : OK, one. Nope. Two. I'll tell you about it in e-mail, since I can't think of a hint that won't just give it away. Not to be nitpicky, but SysV isn't all *that* secure. : As delivered, even Berkeley UNIX is more secure than the best secured : DOS system. No argument there. But it is kind of irrelevant since it is a comparison of apples and oranges. DOS is single user; a single user UNIX system is, in general, just as insecure as a DOS machine: both are equally subject to opening the case and fiddling with the hardware.... Not defending DOS at all: if I didn't have to use it on occasion at work, I'd never touch it at all. I'd rather use CPM. :-) --- Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill bill@twwells.com