From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 12:49:36 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Mounting a "Secure" filesystem in UNIX
In-Reply-To: <199311121921.AA09914@poboy.b17c.ingr.com>
Message-ID: <9311121957.AA03589@snark.lehman.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Paul Robichaux says:
> > The NT security mechanisms are also more complicated,
> > which in my opinion means there are more potential bugs. 
> 
> Absolutely correct. However, I take some comfort from the fact that
> Dave Cutler, of VMS fame, was the principal engineer on NT. For all
> its (myriad) other faults, VMS is fairly secure out of the box.

And the check is in the mail.

At the last site I was at that used VMS, the security patches came in
virtually weekly. The thing is more full of holes than swiss cheese.
VMS stands for Virtually Missing Security.

> > NT is a closed system, and there is no way to personally verify that
> > code does what you think it should. I think its best to depend only on
> > source available systems for security if possible.
> 
> NT doesn't have source available. Neither does SunOS.

SunOS does have source available. Large companies can buy sources
because they feel they need them. Small users can use systems like
Linux. How do I get sources to NT?

I can get drop in replacements for virtually all the programs on
SunOS, from "login" to inetd, and I can hack on them, for free. (BSD
utilities work right out of the box most of the time.) How can I do
that with NT?


Perry