Interactive shells in emacs: a security problem?

[Benson I. Margulies]

In article <2255 at umbc3.UMBC.EDU> mark at umbc3.umbc.edu.UMBC.EDU (Mark Sienkiewicz) writes:

Here's how Multics dealt with this class of issues:

First: all terminal devices were owned by the Initializer. (think of
it as init.)

Second: if a user process wanted a terminal, like a dial-out or 
a pty-equivalent, it had to ask the Initializer via IPC. (imagine
a server on a Unix-domain socket.)

Third: When a user got a terminal, they only got it until it hung up
or their process went away. Then the Initializer regained control and
got to reset the thing to a clean state.

Fourth: for pty-like entities, which I have to admit were not
extensively used by nonprileged code, the two ends were maintained
in suitable access control parallel.

I've always thought that Unix needed a pty allocation management
scheme, to avoid problems of hogging, to avoid access control problems,
and to get utmp and such management to work without any setuid stuff.