Local vs remote exploits
Posted Jun 25, 2004 21:19 UTC (Fri) by
RobSeace (subscriber, #4435)
In reply to:
Local vs remote exploits by giraffedata
Parent article:
Long-lived security holes
Even if I were to buy your claim that the terms were technically wrong in
this context (which I don't), I'd still think your argument was silly...
It's on par with people who complain about the usage of "kilobyte" and
"megabyte" and such, because they're power-of-two based rather than
power-of-ten based, when used in a computing context... Words can mean
different things in different contexts; it happens all the time; people
handle it just fine... Does my grandmother know the difference between a
power-of-two "megabyte" and a power-of-ten "megabyte"? No, but she also
doesn't care... The people that NEED to know, WILL know, from the context...
And, "local" and "remote" in regards to vulnerabilities have been used for
many years in this way, with no one that I've ever seen (until now) confused
or annoyed about them... (The same way kilobyte/megabyte/etc. worked just
fine with no confusion for anyone for years, until some uptight, humorless
party-poopers came along and made up the silly "kibibyte", "mebibyte", etc.
nonsense, and tried to force it down everyone's throats...)
But, even arguing on technical correctness of the terms, I don't think you
have a case... The user IS local to that machine; even if they're loggging
in from a remote machine! They're still a LOCAL user on that destination
machine... Local, as in local to that machine... As in, listed in that
machine's local "/etc/passwd", with a home directory on its local disk,
and with privileges to run programs on its local CPU... I don't think
calling them "local users" is out of line with reality...
(
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