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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.text,net.unix
Subject: Re: Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing
Message-ID: <7193@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Oct-86 15:26:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7193
Posted: Mon Oct  6 15:26:17 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Oct-86 15:26:17 EDT
References: <1246@kitty.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 34

> Most of the examples you cite (locked drawers, hairpins in locks) concern
> concerted and deliberiate attempts to breach security.  My original article
> was more concerned with the casual snoop.  The average UNIX system is more
> likely to have casual pokers-around and security-testers then most OA systems.

If you don't have casual pokers-around and security-testers wandering around
your office, I see no reason why you should let them onto your office Unix.
The average Unix system -- where "average" is defined in terms of the numbers
of systems in the field -- is a small-business system with no dialups, no
public terminals, and most certainly no undergraduate-student accounts.

Actually, even on a "classical" Unix system, in a university environment
with student access, casual snoopers can be fended off quite effectively
by tactics like restrictive umask settings.  Defending against serious
crackers in such an environment does indeed require a lot of work.

> Many perceive a big difference between looking in the corners of a file
> system and snooping through someone else's desk.  They're the ones I was
> writing about.

There is somewhat less of a difference between having to break security
to read a file and having to pick a lock to go through a desk, however.
Agreed that many people feel uninhibited about inspecting files whose owner
has made no effort to protect them, but this is more of a question of
educating the owners:  they need to realize (or have it realized for them,
by the person who sets up the accounts and decides on the umask setting)
that the system as a whole is a *public* environment, like a building
corridor, and some effort must be made to protect files if they are not
to be exposed to one and all.  If the users aren't aware of this and the
person who set up the system hasn't done anything about it, somebody
is guilty of seriously unprofessional negligence.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry