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. :-)

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Bill                    { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com