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SubjectRe: Speaking of SysRQ...
On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Jeff MacDonald wrote:

> Matt Kemner wrote:
> IMHO, the minute you give someone console access to a unix machine, they
> might as well have root privs.. if they can login to the box and 'cat
> /etc/passwd' onto a floppy disk, the possibilities are endless.

That's what shadow passwords are for! If you're not using them on every
public machine you administer you deserve what you get. Actually, you
should be forced to use WinNT for a year since it's comments like that
that make people think that Unix isn't secure.

(Besides, no linux setup that I know of provides default world write
access to the floppy drive.)

You can make a unix box very secure against attacks when the attacker only
has access to the keyboard, monitor, and mouse. SysRQ's hard reboot
facility diminishes this to a slight degree (the machine should have BIOS
protected and not allow the user to pass options to the kernel). That's
not to say that it shouldn't be on by default, but it should be a config
option somewhere...
-Rob H.


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