Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!caen.engin.umich.edu!hobbes
From: hobbes@caen.engin.umich.edu (Steven J  Mattson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Security and defaults.
Message-ID: <43bab2f1.19ac2@wasp.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 9 Jun 89 15:30:00 GMT
References: <51542@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: U of M Engineering, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Lines: 28

From article <51542@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, by jgreely@lisa.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely):
> [Lots of helpful info, punctuated with cigarette smoke.]

While I may have oversimplified some of the problems with the machine in my
last message, I think jgreely's response serves to prove my point.  There's
been a lot of vapor vented in this group over things that could be just simply
stated and discussed.  Jgreely did just that, and people who aren't system
administrators probably learned more about how to protect things in that one
message than previously ever in comp.sys.next.  Go read it again.  I agree
with him that we're probably not going to protect a lab machine completely
from the determined hacker but as long as people don't do anything foolish
like trust lab machines then big deal.  If you're good enough you can do
anything you want to any machine you can get physical access to, period.

But still, the machine isn't supposed to be "Unix knowledge required" in a 
standalone setting.  While a good number of the people here are system
administrators and do know what's going on, Joe Prof. doesn't.  As a support
person I'd rather have to only reconfigure those machines that Profs want
to the network than have to preconfigure everything into every machine and
explain to him what doesn't work the way his documentation says it should
for options he doesn't even want.  If he wants our services, then it's our
job to make things as painless as possible for him so that he can get on
with his work.

 -Steve Mattson
  Computer Aided Engineering Network       ANYONE can edit 
  University of Michigan                   a text file to
  hobbes@caen.engin.umich.edu              his own advantage.