On Fri, 04 Oct 1996 17:43:52 -0700, John Fricker wrote:

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is Windows NT secured system ?

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Windows 4.x moves the graphics/windowing system into Ring 0, where the "secure" parts of the kernel are. Bad. This means graphics bugs can make the kernel insecure or crash. I don't trust it, especially because Windows 3.1 crashes all the time for me, and stupid bugs make Windows 3.1 behave badly for me. So if they put the window system in the kernel, I don't trust it. End of message

Buggy video drivers though can bring the system down. This is 99% of the problems with any modern operating system: drivers written by Juanito's House of Taiwanese Software. But this does not affect security, only stability.

Security in NT can be defeated by any clever, out of work, bored, NT device driver author >who brews up a stealth device driver replacement (perhaps a COM port improvement) that >could run amok on the file system or basically do anything. Of course, any clever device >driver developer is making enough money to not be bored nor even consider writing a >backdoor into a driver. Right?

Doctor Dobb's had an article (with source) that demonstrated a driver that gave full access to *EVERY* application running on an NT box. They also showed how it could be limited to a single application. I believe the source is on their web site... # Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams@acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)