[234] in resnet
Re: remote access (why-not)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gilbert Leung)
Mon Mar 7 03:20:15 1994
To: resnet@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 06 Mar 94 21:32:00 -0500.
Date: Mon, 07 Mar 94 03:19:42 EST
From: Gilbert Leung <gleung@MIT.EDU>
I had a long discuss with a friend and we finally decided that it's
impossible to enforce security unless the root password to the remote
machinesa are kept secret to only ops-staff. Even then, there are too many
other issues to deal with. Some of those were mentioned by marc already.
It could still be done, except that IS, being a business, won't even think
about this as it's not profitable for them to pour in money to develop all
the needed software. What we need are volunteers who would do this job and
actually enjoy doing it (probably for free... maybe someone from SIPB? :)
If not, as marc suggested, it's probably cheaper to buy more dialup
machines. I don't know that much about network hacking but I might
volunteer during the summer (if they let me anyway...) (one person is not
enough, though. any others?)
William Chuang (wchuang) mentioned raised some good issues via zephyr with
me and I kept the log in /mit/gleung/public/remote_security. Be warned
that if you are confused about what we have been talking about, you will
probably be more confused when you read that log. :)
Gilbert
