At 12:24 AM 11/16/96 -0600, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:

Bill Frantz wrote:

...

Protection against strangers walking up to your machine and using it is nice, and easy to do. Protection against viruses which install Trojan horses in your system would also be nice, but is very hard to do in systems where programs run with all the privileges of their users. Examples include (in alpha order): DOS, MacOS, Unix, and Windows (including NT).

I wonder what are the operating systems where programs may be run with _less_ privileges than the user who starts them? Is VMS one of such systems?

Ah, you touch on 20+ years of my professional life. KeyKOS is such a system as is EROS, a similar system being developed at University of Pennsylvania. See: http://www.cis.upenn.edu:80/~eros/ http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~KeyKOS/ http://www.agorics.com/agorics/allkey.html - For KeyKOS documentation. In general these systems provide an execution environment where programs only have access to the resources they need. Think of it as a Unix chroot jail which is specifically designed for each program. Then add controlled communication links back to the user's terminal and you get the idea. Unless a program has a need to write the system file, it won't have the privilege, even if it's user does have the privilege. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The lottery is a tax on | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | those who can't do math. | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | - Who 1st said this? | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA