At 11:29 AM 11/19/2002 +1100, Ken Williams wrote: >On Monday, November 18, 2002, at 06:13 AM, Wiggins d'Anconia wrote: >>Heather Madrone wrote: >>>Most of my career was spent as a C/C++ systems programmer. >>>The damage I can do with a command line as root is nothing >>>compared to the damage I can do with a C compiler. >> >>This makes no sense? Compiling as a non-root user can cause more damage than a root >enabled user? > >She's saying that she's writing systems programs, which (when run) can cause a great >deal of damage if they contain errors or malicious code.
Or, say, when I happen to be patching the machine code on a live production system. (I don't recommend this, but there are times when my employers considered it necessary.) Anyone who uses the rf flags on rm had better check his typing three times before hitting enter, no matter what his userid. I think we've been talking apples and oranges here. Different systems have different security needs, and different people assess risks differently. Oh, and btw, although I have Windows systems at home, I've mostly worked on BSD and Sun systems, with various stretches on other brands of Unix as well as other operating systems. But let's get back to perl. Heather Madrone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.madrone.com Reality: deeper than I dreamed.
