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From: marco@email.ncsc.navy.mil (Barbarisi)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: BSD tty security
Message-ID: <26758@adm.brl.mil>
Date: 2 May 91 22:37:15 GMT
Sender: news@adm.brl.mil
Lines: 18

I am not a Wizard, but I sometimes play one at work.  Far be it from
me to throw water on an entertaining flame war, but there is an obvious
fix to the problem with "write" that you all have overlooked.  Namely,
Mr. or Ms. Root (whom I assume is the SysAdmin) logs on and does this:

     rm /bin/write

There.  No more games with write.  If someone squawks about the loss of this
feature, tell them to use sendmail or, dare I say it,......the phone!

There is also an alternative to "write" called "talk", which appears to
be far less susceptable to abuse.  I believe it comes with modern
flavors of BSD.  

Marco C. Barbarisi
marco@email.ncsc.navy.mil
"The truth is made up of little particulars which
 seem ridiculous by themselves."  - Jack Crabb