Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:20:45 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com> To: Sung Nae Cho <sucho2@quasar.phys.vt.edu> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD more secure than Windows NT or Windows 2000? Message-ID: <3B59E41D.7012246F@iowna.com> References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107211527090.7405-100000@quasar.phys.vt.edu>
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Sung Nae Cho wrote: > One thing that makes me uncomfortable with both Linux and FreeBSD is that > unlike Windows NT, both UNIX clones seem to be less secure for a desktop > use. ( ** Note clones doesn't mean it's any less better than UNIX, it just > means, it's not officially considered UNIX by OPEN-GROUP ** ) I've used > Windows NT 4.0 since '98, Linux since '99, FreeBSD since '00 and finally > gone FreeBSD only on my laptop. However, unlike, Windows NT 4.0, other > people can get access to my confidential files! How? Well, they can just > reinstall the FreeBSD without deleting my $HOME directory and as a root, > they can access all my files! This is an illusion. Let me borrow your laptop for 15 minutes, and I'll boot off a floppy, read through all your files and give it back to you without you having a clue as to what I've done - no matter what OS you've got installed. The funny "security checks" that NT/2000 do on install are only an illusion of security. As someone else pointed out, the only way to guarantee the privacy of your files on a stolen HDD is to encrypt them. Actually, this isn't a guarantee, since just about any encryption is crackable if the cracker has enough time on his hands and enough patience. You can only hope that it takes him so long to crack, that by the time he decrypts it the information isn't valuable any more. Using RSA algorithms with large keys ( >1024 ) is a good way to do this. -Bill -- It may be that true happiness is nothing more than the ability to *always* know the right thing to say at the right time, whereas true misery is the state of perpetually saying to oneself, "What I *should* have said was..." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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