How secure is UNIX?

Sam Bassett RCS samlb at pioneer.arc.nasa.gov
Tue May 29 08:57:27 AEST 1990


	Moral of the story:

	Don't put passwords in your .netrc, dum-dum.  (Or anywhere that
*anybody* can read 'em -- even you!)  (Don't assume it's the sysop,
either -- assume that UNIX is *NOT* secure until it is proven otherwise.)

	Note that I am not condoning snooping and poking by System
Administrators -- that is impolite, among other things.  I _AM_ taking
this kid to task for wasting net bandwidth with anguished (and
over-wordy) cries of outrage about something that his teachers should
have pointed out to him in his first semester.
	UNIX was not designed to be secure.  It was designed (sic) to
make programming and file-handling convenient.  If you want something to
be secure, either learn something about encryption or *KEEP IT OFF-LINE*


Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center, 
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 604-4792;  Home: (415) 969-2644
samlb at well.sf.ca.us                     samlb at ames.arc.nasa.gov 
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'



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