Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!eniac.seas.upenn.edu!jeff
From: jeff@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Jeffrey M White)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re:  Anyone using macdump?
Message-ID: <16843@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 13 Nov 89 17:04:02 GMT
References: <6041.8911131514@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: jeff@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Jeffrey M White)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 30

In article <6041.8911131514@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> inei@cs.glasgow.ac.UK (Nick Nei) writes:
>John Kellow writes:
>
>======================================================================
>I've been playing around with the macdump program that lets you dump a
>mac hard disk to a unix host.  It seems to work pretty well.  Is
>anyone using this on a regular basis - if so I'd like to hear from you
>about any problems or comments that you may have.  I don't want to
>rely on it until I know its reliable.  One thing I'm concerned about is
>security.  What prevents an unauthorized person from doing a dump of your
>mac?  Even if you restrict access to the macdump program, I don't see
>why someone couldn't just get a copy of the program themselves and
>compile it.  Otherwise it seems like a nice idea.
>======================================================================
>
>I've had to modify the source code so that only the user can dump
>his/her own disc, except superuser.
>

  That's an obvious solution, but the problem still remains if the source
code for the program is available from any of the public domain sites.  A
user only has to obtain his own original version of the code and then compile
it himself.
  I think the real solution, as I said in another posting, is to create a
"version 2" of the Mac cdev that will only communicate with a "version 2"
of the unix macdump program, with this new version having security restrictions
(such as having to run suid root) that are required.

						Jeff White
						jeff@eniac.seas.upenn.edu