[CS-FSLUG] Five Linux Security Myths You Can Live Without

[Bob Brown]

It is hard to run in a limited account on XP as a standard user. 
This is not necessarily a problem with XP, but in the outside software
developers who still hang on to legacy practices.

On the network at the church everyone runs on limited access except
for the admins. If anyone needs anything installed then an admin needs
to log in for it.

On my home system I still have programs that require admin rights to
run at all. Perhaps when I start fresh next time I will have lost all
the old programs.

On 4/26/05, Don Parris <gnumathetes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/25/05, Josiah Ritchie <jritchie at bible.edu> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2005-04-24 at 20:40 -0400, Don Parris wrote:
> > > But even at the basic level, you're
> > > probably more secure than WinXP (I don't know about how it compares
> > > before and after SP2).
> >
> > I don't think this is accurate after SP2. My experience with it suggests
> > a solid firewall that is reasonably secure considering it is mostly
> > automated. Flexibility is near zilch, but a home user doesn't need much
> > more than that.
> >
> > MS is getting better in the security field. 98se has no hope as it will
> > never get these upgrades. XP has improved significantly. They realize it
> > is neccesary to squash the security issue now that Linux has brought the
> > true nature of it to light. It may not be too little to late. 2003
> > server is much more solid. Each shutdown requires a record for the
> > reason, the web browser is locked out of all pages by default and no
> > service is automatically started without specific need. These are all
> > significant improvements over 2000 server.
> >
> > Don't worry, I still prefer Linux. I just don't want us to base
> > decisions on outdated information. The windows crowd does enough of that
> > for the both of us. :-)
> >
> > JSR/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> 
> Does SP2 lock down the filesystem?  I mean, on my system at work
> (shared with 3 others), everyone has write access to the system
> folders by default.  I can't do that as a regular Joe on SUSE Linux
> (nor any of the others I've tried, for that matter).  On a Win system,
> anyone with regular user privileges can write a big bad virus anywhere
> they want (assuming they've gotten access to a regular user login).
> By my understanding, they might mess up the regular GNU user's
> account, but can't necessarily get past that without gaining root
> access.
> 
> Any input here?
> 
> --
> DC Parris GNU Evangelist
> http://matheteuo.org/
> gnumathetes at gmail.com
> Free software is like God's love -
> you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!
> 
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