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From: yahnke@vms.macc.wisc.edu (Ross Yahnke, MACC)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Resedit and FileGuard
Message-ID: <4141@dogie.macc.wisc.edu>
Date: 3 Aug 90 20:51:51 GMT
Sender: news@dogie.macc.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Academic Computing Center
Lines: 43

In article <1990Aug3.163157.28701@midway.uchicago.edu>, dwal@ellis.uchicago.edu (David Walton) writes...

-In article <1941@ux.acs.umn.edu> clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu (Chaz Larson) writes:
-Any experienced user, however, can generally break security without
-ResEdit: the easiest tool to use is a System disk.  Boot the machine
-with a floppy, and viola, all of the protective INITs and cDEVs don't
-do anything. 

Sorry, Wrongo, read on...

-it.  Finally, protecting FileGaurd wouldn't do that much good, because
-a boot disk with ResEdit could bypass FileGaurd (by not installing it
-at boot time), and with ResEdit the user could cause as much mischief
-as his/her little heart desires.

You might want to try FileGuard out before saying stuff like this. 
FileGuard will effectively and completely prevent someone from accessing 
a protected volume, *even if they boot off a system diskette!*. When you 
boot a mac from a system diskette and the FileGuard protected volume 
mounts you will be asked for a password. If you don't have it the volume 
won't mount and is inaccessible, even from HD Setup--for those who would 
be so perturbed at such protection that they would attempt a low level 
format.

FileGuard will allow "guest" access to a FileGuard protected volume,
so you can boot off of the FileGuard protected HD without supplying
a password; doing so of course puts the guest under the control of
whatever options the FileGuard administrator has chosen. This can
include the disallowal of inserting any diskette, which would prevent
an unwanted ResEdit from running. It also makes it hard to save your
docs on a diskette, tho you could use an AppleShare drop folder...

What FileGuard lacks and needs is a way to prevent the lauching of
undesirable apps like ResEdit. More importantly it needs a way to
intercept the types of calls these apps could potentially make
by malicious users bent on defeating FileGuard or screwing up other
System Folder files. This was, I believe, the original posters
concerns. 

Compared to A.M.E, from Casady & Greene, I find FileGuard a real
useful, robust, ez to use program.

>>> yahnke@macc.wisc.edu <<<