UNIX bashing (Re: a holiday gift from Robert "wormer" Morris)

[Peter da Silva]

In article <11226 at cgl.ucsf.EDU>, seibel at cgl.ucsf.edu (George Seibel) writes:
> In article <76424 at sun.uucp> dre%ember at Sun.COM (David Emberson) writes:
> >[Matt Bishop (now at Dartmouth)] wrote a paper detailing at least a half
> >dozen holes in the Unix system...

UNIX in general or things like sendmail that are specific to BSD?

> "Congratulations!  You just
> bought a fine copy of Unix.  Don't keep any files you care about on it."
[ because we're not going to fix any security holes ]

You see, this is the sort of response we're going to get from this sort
of confusion. UNIX is not just BSD. The latest release of System V has
many security improvements... some of which were apparently made at the
urging of Robert Morris himself.

Another consideration.

Most of the individuals who buy computers run MS-DOS, a file manager and
program loader that doesn't begin to try to keep viruses out. It can't,
for obvious reasons. For all its faults, UNIX is a lot more secure than
the alternatives available to the general public.

The typical virus in an unprotected DOS or OS is at most a few K of
code... many only a few hundred bytes. This worm required a leader that
was nearly a hundred lines of 'C' code by itself.

Let's keep a sense of proportion.
-- 
Peter da Silva  `-_-'  Ferranti International Controls Corporation
"Have you hugged  U  your wolf today?"     uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter
Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn business.   peter at ficc.uu.net