quote:
My windows 2000 box can do that
This past summer, Steve Ballmer (yes, THAT Steve Ballmer) described in an interview how his household had two 'puters between himself, his wife, and kids. He admitted that, prior to getting Win XP, files were being screwed up by this sharing. This wouldn't have happened had he been using *NIX since each user would have had his or her own account, with their own passwords. According to Ballmer himself, no version of Windows prior to XP had this feature. Was he lying?
quote:
Windows securty is is as good as the admin of the box, just like unix.
No *NIX has the vast array of exploits that Windows has: Outlook worms, macro virii that sneak in on Word documents, Excell spreadsheets, Powerpoint slides. Just last week, four Israeli script kiddies (ages 14 and 15) launched the Goner worm. Within a day, this thing had spread half-way around the world. The last *NIX worm that did that was the Morris worm back in the early 1980s. And Morris, himself, was no script kiddie.
quote:
One user? One pc? no networking? What are you talking about?
Here is exactly what I'm talking about: UNIX was originally designed as an OS for mainframes. This meant multiple users. The UNIX file system incorporates "accounts" to keep one user from harming another's files. Users may be bundled together into "groups". Thus, every directory and file has three levels of permissions: User, group, and world. Each user sets his or her own level of permissions to determine who will, or will not, be allowed access to those files. The user also sets three other permissions: readable, writeable, and executable (nine total permissions). These file permissions may be overridden only by the superuser: noone else. This keeps all the system files protected and straight. MS-DOS, on the other hand, was intended as an op-sys for the first small computers, usually running Intel 8085s or Zilog Z-80s. With an eight bit word length, and 16 bit addressing, there was no way more than one person could use it at a time. Therefore, file permissions were not incorporated. In MS-DOS and Windows, *every* user is the superuser. Try this: go into Windows Explorer, click on the Windows folder, select some critical file (ending with .com, .sys, .dat) then click on "delete" and see what happens. If you let it, it *will* delete it. Hell, try deleting the entire Windows folder - it'll do that too. Try that on a Linux rig - or any other *NIX rig - and you'll get an access denied warning, and it won't do it. Only the superuser could do a thing like that (which is why you should avoid superuser status unless it's absolutely necessary AND you know what you're doing). File permissions didn't reappear until Win XP; and, of course, they're touting it as something grand and glorious. :eek: They are only putting back that which they took out 25 years ago.
This wasn't such a big deal until the Internet came along. Now *every* Windows rig that connects to the 'Net may not have just a single user, whether you know it or not. If some cracker gets in, he's *automatically* the superuser. He can get your rig to do his bidding with no trouble at all. That's why Windows rigs are so frequently involved in DDoS attacks, that's why Windows runs all that lovely spyware and adware. Download that "freebie" app and, without your knowledge, you're running a server that's serving up all your personal data. There is no such thing as Linux spyware. Why? Because, without root priveledge, the spyware app can't "phone home" without your knowing about it and specifically authorizing it to do so. If it were to attempt to change file permissions, you'd know about that too. And it's a damn fine line between spyware and a Trojan. Windows systems were *never* designed to network with other computers. Some 50000 WinViruses and still counting testifies to that with far more eloquence than I.
