Re: Upcoming Debian Releases
"Brian C. White" <bcwhite@verisim.com> wrote:
>
>> Here at Monash, I see a lot of people dialling in, using PPP, from Linux
>> boxes. Many of these don't even have a root password! Today's standalone
>> machine may well be tomorrow's networked box.. and if their distribution
>> is to blame by including a known hole, they _will_ get themselves a
>> different distribution, and discourage their friends from using Debian.
>
>What you describe is a very serious problem as it allows anyone access
>to their machine.
>
>However, the X problem requires being able to log into their machine
>in the first place. That indicates that the user went through at least
>a little trouble to make their machine multi-user.
Oh, true.. the point I wanted to make (albeit not very clearly - I tend not
to be very coherent at times :) - it's definitely time I took that break
that's coming up :) is that many people don't bother to check out the
security on their systems. As such, it falls upon Debian to ship at least a
moderately secure system - both in terms of root and user passwords, and
other holes that can only be exploited by local users.
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