Re: [Nautilus-list] Idea for Nautilus and GMC.

[Miles Lane <miles megapathdsl net>]

On 23 May 2001 17:13:22 -0400, Iain wrote:
> 
> > A warning is better than no warning and letting a user just set the
> > bit himself.  
> 
> Well, Outlook/IE has a warning, and still the viruses keep coming.

Linux 2.6 will have security hooked much more deeply into the kernel.
Even without this, if a system is well-configured, a user should not be
able to totally hose the machine.  I'm not sure how Windows NT handles
this. NT at least has a notion of priviliged users. Win9X doesn't have
any isolation of the core system from the user.

In regards to mail attachment viruses that propagate themselves using
mail address lists, I'd say Evolution should probably not execute script
attachments at all. As for Nautilus, perhaps a warning would suffice.
Users will run scripts and programs of questionable origin whether you
make it easy for them or not.  I think this falls in the "give them
enough rope to hang themselves" category. Nautilus is about making life
easlier for naive users. This means that at least the user's personal
environment is likely to be less secure than we'd like. I think that is
just the cost of hiding system complexity from the user.

I know that this is heresy for Linux geeks who don't want to cater to
users who are perfectly happy with the MacOS/WinXX environments.

	Miles