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Re: What could have been done differently?

  • From: just me
  • Date: Wed Jan 29 15:26:57 2003

On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Scott Francis wrote:

  On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:47:30AM -0800, [email protected] said:
  > On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Scott Francis wrote:
  >
  >   He argued instead that OSes should be redesigned to implement the
  >   principle of least privilege from the ground up, down to the
  >   architecture they run on.
  >
  > [...]
  >
  >   The problem there is the same as with windowsupdate - if one can spoof the
  >   central authority, one instantly gains unrestricted access to not one, but
  >   myriad computers.
  >
  > [...]
  >
  >   So far, the closest thing I've seen to this concept is the ssh
  >   administrative host model: adminhost:~root/.ssh/id_dsa.pub is
  >   copied to every targethost:~root/.ssh/authorized_keys2, such that
  >   commands can be performed network-wide from a single station.
  >
  > Do you even read what you write? How does a host with root access to
  > an entire set of hosts exemplify the least privilege principle?

  Your selections from my post managed to obscure the fact that I was making
  more than one point. I did _not_ state that the ssh key mgmt system outlined
  above exemplifies least privilege. I was merely making a comparison between
  that model and the topic under discussion, central
  administrative/authenticating authorities.

So when windowsupdate does it, its a problem, because they aren't
using ssh keys? I'm just confused, as they both seem to represent the
same model in your discussion, however one is a "problem" and the
other is a sugegsted practice.

Is it because windowsupdate requres explicit action on each client
machine to operate?

I'm still missing whatever point you were trying to make in your
original post.

  Please do not put words into my mouth.

I'm not. I'm simply quoting ones coming from it.

matto

[email protected]<darwin><
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