Re: Ports 0-1023?

[Kent Crispin <kent () songbird com>]

The privileged port mechanism has never been based on the assumption 
that remote system administraters are somehow more trustworthy.

The privileged port mechanism primarily deals with issues of intRA-host
trust (how does an administrator of a multi-user system be sure that his
users aren't doing bad stuff) and not issues of intER-host trust (how
does an administrator of a system, single-user or multi-user, ensure
that a remote machine is not doing bad stuff).  As long as there are 
multi-user machines, privileged ports will be necessary.

The problem of how to manage a multi-user machine securely in the face
of potential malicious users is often ignored, perhaps because it is so
difficult :-)

-- 
Kent Crispin, Technical Systems Manager, ICANN            crispin () icann org
"Be good, and you will be lonesome."  -- Mark Twain       kent () songbird com