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Ctrl-Alt-Del helps keep your password secure...

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mobrien_12:
When you hit ctrl-alt-delete while logged in, you get the dialog which allows you to open the task manager.  When you hit that sequence while not logged in, you get a login dialog box.

The idea is to prevent some buttmunch from logging in and then starting a program which LOOKS like a login screen, but which actually stores your username and password and terminates, leaving the other desktop behind.  This could allow someone, for example, to read the root password when the admin "logs in."  

If such a program were running, the ctrl-alt-delete would bring up the other dialog box, and you would know something fishy was up.

It's actually not a bad idea.  Linux also has support for this, but you need to compile it into the kernel, if I remember right, and it is experimental.

voidmain:
Yeah, but who needs passwords when dealing with M$ OSs? Maybe they should have spent some of that time programming that super secure CTRL+ALT+DEL code fixing some of the bigger security flaws. But it's all window dressing...

mobrien_12:
Yeah, I'm certainly not saying that Windows is secure, but that was the idea behind the ctrl-alt-delete to login.  It's not a bad idea, but even a good lock won't secure a broken window.

Calum:
or a broken windows.

good idea now it's explained, to start with it just seemed to me that it was 'press some key sequence and it magically makes your password secure'.

on the other hand, if the admin did fall for that trick, surely they would realise that it had happened when they saw that the computer behaved unexpectedly afterwards, or is there some way to make it log out and then login as the user whose password details have just been snagged? actually there probably is.

Anyway, if said admin did notice, all they'd need to do is find out who was running the malicious process, freeze their account, change the root password and have a quiet word with the alleged guilty party.

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

cahult:
Well, I just love the inconsistencies in windows. Press start to get to the shut down command, ctrl+alt+del to log in and the same keys to shut down some functions or the whole computer, alt+F4 to exit some apps, ctrl+W for other app exits and so on.

"I propose having Microsoft Headquarters set on fire and destroyed, their employees be driven out and sold as slaves on the open source market!"

Me, 2002

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