Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ncar!husc6!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!tada
From: tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: VMS Security Update
Message-ID: <4205@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 31 Mar 88 21:02:33 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr)
Distribution: na
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 31


Today I arrived in my office to find two, count 'em two tapes from DEC.
Both of them said "VAX/VMS-MICROVMS V4 MUP TK50".  Both of came with a
"you must install this to fix a security problem"  letter.  I recall
getting something like this summer/fall/a-while-ago.  Typically, my 
reaction would be: okay, access to our systems is pretty well controlled,
but i might as well install this stuff anyway.  But, there are a few
reasons why I'm hesitating.

Our software upgrade service was stuck for a while and recently became
unstuck (we only recently got C 3.2 and VMS 4.7 -- we're still waiting
for VMS 4.6) and it's possibly that we should have gotten these a while
ago but didn't.  (I hunted down the old cover letter for the old security
update, and the code on it is different, but it could just be re-packaged.)

Also, the sort of work we've been doing of late requires a number of batch
jobs to be running all the time, and they'd all have to be restarted
after the install and reboot, and i'd have to coordinate it with all 
the different project people.

So... my question is, is this a New Thing? Or and Old Thing?  And does anyone
know whether it's really essential or not?

Thanks for any help.

Oh, by the way, the tape number is AQ-LD66A-BE and the letters that came with
it are AV-LS14A-TE and AV-LD72A-TE it that helps anyone figure out what
these are...

-------
michael j zehr
"My opinions are my own ... as is my spelling."