Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!yetti!geac!daveb From: daveb@geac.UUCP (Brown) Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Security problem on UNIX PC's Message-ID: <1487@geac.UUCP> Date: Sun, 27-Sep-87 14:48:35 EDT Article-I.D.: geac.1487 Posted: Sun Sep 27 14:48:35 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 27-Sep-87 19:47:12 EDT References: <54@quincy.UUCP> <6478@brl-smoke.ARPA> Reply-To: daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown) Organization: The little blue rock next to that twinkly star. Lines: 26 Keywords: security, root, problem, unix-pc Xref: mnetor comp.sys.att:1336 comp.unix.wizards:4534 In article <6478@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) writes: >Second moral: It's hard to provide a guaranteed controlled environment >that is also featureful. Chroot can help with this, but by the time >sufficient useful facilities are placed into the new environment, it's >not much safer than an uncontrolled environment. This has been dealt with to a limited degree in the second version of "Secure Xenix[1]". The trusted shell[2] is a table-driven command interpreter with a facility to set the "role" of the user, which serves to set the tables that she can use. Ie, if I'm the auditor and the filesystem maintainer, I can issue both filesystem and auditing commands. This is know as an "open subsystem", and was first popularized by ICL (you know, the english mainframers). It is the opposite of a "closed subsystem" like mail or . --dave 1. Xenix is a Trademark of Microsoft. 2. Hecht et all, "UNIX without the Superuser", in "Conference Proceedings of the Summer 1987 USENIX Technical Conference and Exposition". -- David Collier-Brown. {mnetor|yetti|utgpu}!geac!daveb Geac Computers International Inc., | Computer Science loses its 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, | memory (if not its mind) CANADA, L3R 1B3 (416) 475-0525 x3279 | every 6 months.