> That is why they have sandbox security...

That's all well and good, except that sandbox security isn't on by default,
and even when you do use it, the potential exists for the service to do
things that you wouldn't want to allow. There's no way around that - if the
service runs as SYSTEM, then it it completely unfettered by the restrictions
normally placed by the OS on user actions.

For an analogy, you just have to look at IIS. IIS runs as SYSTEM, but when
it receives a request for an HTML page or the like, it impersonates a
less-privileged user (typically IUSR_MACHINE) and processes the request as
that user. That's very similar to the idea of sandbox security. However,
nearly all of the public problems with IIS occur when it receives a
malformed request, and executes the instructions within that request as
SYSTEM - at that point, it's game over, man!

With IIS, you don't have a choice - it has to run as SYSTEM - so you simply
remove all of the unnecessary functionality which breaks when processing
these malformed requests. With CF, you do have a choice - you can run it as
a less-privileged user. A general axiom of security is to use the least
amount of privilege necessary.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
voice: (202) 797-5496
fax: (202) 797-5444
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