Full Disclosure mailing list archives
RE: Support the Sasser-author fund started
From: "Stuart Fox (DSL AK)" <StuartF () datacom co nz>
Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 16:38:26 +1200
All the features required of mature operating systems were added as an afterthought and not designed in. Such things as memory management and file access control
They've been designed into the Windows NT based OS from the start.
on a single user/single process/non-network OS. To maintain backward compatibility with DOS and Windows 95, key OS data structures have many assumptions about things like buffer size that lead to buffer overflows. Witness the assumption about machine names that led to Slammer.
Which is an implementation issue, not a design issue. The whole Microsoft
OS effort has been to grow from a system designed for minimal size machines such as the 640K PC to something that can be used as a system for commerce. Features have been bolted on as they are deemed sellable to make a profit. It wasn't until NT that the file system even had the concept of access control
So since around 1993 then? and backward compatibility has meant that the default
ACL is give everyone full control.
Which has now changed (and a good thing too)
Unix, by contrast, has always been designed as a multi-user/multi-process system so things like file security and separation of processes are inherent.
That's a bit of a stretch. Unix has had security bolted on after the fact as well - it's just got about ten years head start on Windows. Your mail seemed to switch between issues relating to design and issues relating to implementation - from what I can gather the design of the NT OS is a good one (Things like ActiveX excluded), but the implementation has been full of holes. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- RE: Support the Sasser-author fund started, (continued)
- RE: Support the Sasser-author fund started Matthew Schlosser (May 13)
- Support the Sasser-author fund started Oliver Raymond (May 13)
- Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started James Riden (May 13)
- Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started Charlie Harvey (May 14)
- RE: Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started Stefan Engelbert (May 16)
- Re: Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started Kurt Seifried (May 16)
- Re: Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started John Galt (May 17)
- Re: Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started madsaxon (May 17)
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- Re: Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started John Galt (May 18)
- Re: Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started Kurt Seifried (May 16)
- Re: Support the Sasser-author fund started Valdis . Kletnieks (May 17)