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Subject:RE: Security followup From:SteveFJong -at- aol -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sat, 18 Jan 2003 11:18:20 EST
Security is not my specialty. That said, I know a little about the background
of the major operating systems being discussed, having worked at Honeywell
when they had Multics, the timesharing mainframe OS that inspired UNIX.
Multics was designed to be secure in a multiuser environment. Memory
partitions were protected by both software and hardware mechanisms. Files
were protected by access control at the user and group level. Theoretically,
there was no way for a Multics user to determine that there was anyone else
even logged in. Multics was the first (and only) computer system to get the
government's highest security rating.
UNIX was designed as Multics for Digital minicomputers (I worked at DEC, too,
though not in the OS groups). DEC systems didn't have specific hardware
protections for security, as far as I recall, but the philosophy of security
survived into UNIX. (The access-control mechanism is the same, I think.)
(Further paragraphs about Windows and Mac deleted for fear of touching off
shelling 8^)
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