RE: Hypothetical design question

["Alun Jones" <alun () texis com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 10:06 AM
>
> You left out an intermediate possibility: implementation realities.  
> While it is true that privilege separation can be accomplished in
> Windows NT derivatives, it usually isn't in practice, 
> particularly with
> home users.  This is not true of Unix-like consumer operating systems
> (even OS X), which were designed with privilege separation in 
> mind, and
> whose user bases are accustomed to it.

I thought I covered it with "Another societal benefit is that Linux users
are used to running as non-admins."  Thanks for the extra clarifications.

> Absent a software bug, the worst that I'm likely do to myself as a
> non-privileged user on an out-of-the-box Red Hat system is destroy my
> own data and send a lot of bogus email -- not trash my 
> operating system,
> as so often happens to Windows users who are accustomed to 
> running with
> administrative privileges.

While that's important to protecting _your_ system, of course that isn't
much help to those of us that are receiving a hail of virus-infected emails
(dragging this back to where we started).  If users can send emails, and
users' processes become infected, then it really doesn't matter, to the
outside world, whether those users are administrators or not.  And if your
system is running a subverted process, even inside of a user's privileges,
it's still executing unauthorised code.

To most corporations, a user damaging his/her own data, and data that he/she
is allowed access to, can be as damaging as a root invasion.  That's why a
lot of corporations strictly limit what applications may be run, and only
allow admins to install new applications or updates.

[Of course, there's also the prevalence of privilege elevation attacks - on
a number of operating systems - that can turn even a non-admin infection
into a root infection.]

Alun.
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