Interesting, not unexpected. [LWN.net]

Interesting, not unexpected.

Posted Feb 12, 2008 22:32 UTC (Tue) by jd (guest, #26381)
In reply to: Interesting, not unexpected. by jae
Parent article: DNS Inventor Warns of Next Big Threat (Dark Reading)

Yes, computer software must be theoretically insecure, but that does not mean it is necessarily exploitably insecure. You need a continuous exploitable series of vectors from outermost point to exploitable point, for the system to be vulnerable. There will always be such vectors, but the coders have an advantage in that they don't need to prove such a continuous chain exists to either find or fix a bug, and admins can always install software and/or policies that eliminate entire classes of vulnerabilities.

I'm concerned (to an extent) that software QA is still often seen as an optional extra, and I'm very concerned that admins often ignore what solutions do exist for restricting how someone could attack a system. Systems security often reminds me of the story of the tortoise and the hare, with one minor difference. The hare at least entered the race; by using insecure configurations and avoiding secure protocols, I'm not convinced that admins have even reached that point yet.

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Interesting, not unexpected.

Posted Feb 13, 2008 1:47 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Well lets start with getting rid of Email. Just rip it out, it's a total mess.  IM is pretty
good at avoiding spam. Being fairly realtime means that it's difficult to hide the origins and
such and authentication is stronger.

And FTP. That's a good one to get rid of. What you'll do to replace it is anybody's guess.
Unfortunately.

So that's about, what, half the Internet? A big job to be sure.

And then there is some issues with TCP/IP that would be lovely to have resolved. Oh well.

Still I've always hated Email. I would applaud it's demise. I mean it was great when it was
new, but it's time has moved on. Just like Gopher's.

Interesting, not unexpected.

Posted Feb 13, 2008 20:29 UTC (Wed) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]

What's instead if email ? "IM2000" by djb ?
Instant messaging does not care about message storage. It does not offer something like IMAP.

I think they meant (E)SMTP.

Posted Feb 13, 2008 23:51 UTC (Wed) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

Their complaints wouldn't apply to X.400 (which is still e-mail), where something like IMAP or POP3 would certainly be very usable.

I think most people have given up on Lotus Notes, and DEC Mail had numerous scripting vulnerabilities that made it a Really Bad System. Trying to think of any other half-decent mechanisms, but nothing springs to mind.

Since delivery of e-mail is essentially appending to files (a special case of patching), there are probably ways of using version control systems to deliver multiple e-mails (even to multiple users) in a single network transaction securely. Never heard of anyone doing this though.

I think they meant (E)SMTP.

Posted Feb 14, 2008 12:02 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

> Since delivery of e-mail is essentially appending to files (

Only if you've not switched to maildir-like stores yet

Interesting, not unexpected.

Posted Feb 13, 2008 23:35 UTC (Wed) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

SMTP is not that great, but if you're only addressing security then SMTP over SSL is perfectly good. If you want to replace SMTP altogether, then the most comprehensive e-mail messaging protocol in existance has to be X.400, which contains all kinds of features that SMTP-based e-mail users would just drool over. E-mail isn't the problem, vanilla SMTP is.

Replacing FTP is easy. SCP is the usual alternative. RSync over a secure transport is another popular candidate. I've even seen people distribute binaries over Subversion. FSP (connectionless FTP-like protocol) never really took off, but that's probably as much because nobody provided content using it. For interactive downloads, you could use something like Gopher. Again, if the issue is only security, then SFTP is perfectly good.

A lot of the issues with TCP/IP were addressed in IPv5 (I think that's what TUBA got allocated) and IPv6, but again content is limited. C'mon, it's easy to complain about protocols, but if everybody just continues to use what they hate in preference to something they would logically want, nobody is going to believe the complaints. I consider some of the groups who use alternatives as being, well, over-the-top, but I respect them deeply nonetheless because they make a sincere effort.