Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!lisa.cis.ohio-state.edu!jgreely
From: jgreely@lisa.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Security and defaults.
Message-ID: <51575@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 9 Jun 89 16:50:08 GMT
References: <4985@umd5.umd.edu> <43b721a8.19ac2@wasp.engin.umich.edu> <5169@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: J Greely <jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
Lines: 45

In article <5169@pt.cs.cmu.edu> avie@wb1.cs.cmu.edu (Avadis Tevanian) writes:
>There are always going to be applications that seem to be overly privileged
>as shipped --- this is necessary to handle that naive, standalone user.

...and, try as I might, I can't fault you for that.

>I think it would be valuable; however, to get feedback on any area where
>system administrators feel they can not protect their system.  I will then
>attempt to make sure that we can find solutions to get into 1.0.

Now *there's* an offer we can't refuse :-).  Should those of us
submitting bug reports through the regular route just make lump
"security suggestion" reports?

  While I'm on the subject, who is (are) the anonymous entity
(entities) who handle initial responses to bug reports?  I understand
the desire to have all responses directed to the central mailbox, but
when replying to a reply to a bug report I like to feel that I'm
talking to a person.  When I'm writing to someone who goes by the name
of "NeXT Technical Services Bug Reporting", I feel like I'm yelling at
a wall.  I've thought about formally suggesting that the reply
software be hacked to include the person's name, while leaving the
address pointed at the group.  Comments?

>I also think it would be very valuable to put together a list of things
>that a system administrator might want to do (e.g., disable setuid on
>Preferences, remove BuildDisk, ...) and make it available to other system
>administrators.  Perhaps someone out there would like to be the collection
>point for this.

There's only one collection point that can really work, and that's
NeXT.  We can hunt for security problems all day, and never be sure
that we haven't missed something that has been deliberately introduced
to help the naive user.  Eventually we'll find or hear about most
problems, but it would be nice if we *knew* what had been changed to
accommodate the hypothetical new user, and you're the only people who
know all of the changes.

  Still, if people would like a clearinghouse for security problems
and fixes under 0.9, I'll be happy to collect and redistribute them to
interested parties.  Someone out there has probably spotted something
I missed, so I'm not being *entirely* altruistic.

-=-
J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)