[Coco] Re: OS Vulnerabilities

[James Ross]

>> John E. Malmberg wrote:

>There is a limit to how much stupidity that you can defend against.  

Is that like a documented limit?  "The Stupid Limit" A new technical
term :)

>Any 
>Admin that runs or installs programs from unknown sources with 
>privileges enabled is easy to target.

Mirror sites? Dot two characters; Let's see what country is that?
some-cheap-place-for-linux-cds.com? Magazines? eBay.com CD-R?  I am
certain that thousands of by people who are otherwise competent use
all these sources.

>That just means that the Administrator is not very smart about security.

By Administrator you mean "The dude using his Linux box at home".  Or
the new hire in the IT department.  

That is right 
 more than likely they do not have a PhD in computer
science or computer security.  I've been in computers, well, since
that this is CoCo group, let's see ... some  23 years and counting. I
am still a novice, when it comes to security.  I'm learning, but I
know nothing.

>There is almost no way to use technology to protect against social 
>engineering.

I would say that Banks are doing a good job at it.

>My Operating System in use on this computer is OpenVMS.  It has been out 
>there since the 1970's and is still being actively developed.  I am
>using Mozilla as a news reader and a web browser.
>
>So it qualifies as a modern OS.

Would you recommend it to My Mom or Dad, or my 3 brothers-in-law's and
one brother?  All who use computers on daily basis but have no idea
about the technical details of what can be harmful to their computer?
Nor would I expect them to.

>It is also practically indestructible and gives the control to the 
>system owner.

Make a list of the mistakes you can make that can hose it.  How large
is that list?  C'mon now, be honest.

>But at some point, you have to have trusted software that runs in a 
>privilege context.  There is no way around that.

There is no doubt about that.  Especially the OS.  And that is the
crux of the matter. The OS should protect you from the rest. 

JR