On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 20:30 +0100, d-...@hadrian-way.co.uk wrote: > Another one I couldn't resist: > > http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,617,530.PN.&OS=PN/7,617,530&RS=PN/7,617,530 > > There's a lot of discussion about this over on Groklaw and PJ has got it a bit > wrong by saying that MS has a patent on sudo. However, even if you think it > makes sense to patent software (I don't), it seems that all they have done is > to > patent a method of escalating priveledges (not necessarily to root), by > presenting the user with a GUI. > > Under the bonnet it seems to do a bit more than sudo, which allows priveledge > excalation as defined by the sudoers file (AIUI). The patented method seems > to > examine the priveledges of all of the users on the system and chooses one that > gives sufficient priveledge, but no more. Seems to be a lot of work for > little > gain, but even if it was useful, it's only a incremental update to what the > sudo > tools in KDE, Gnome and MacOSX already do. > -- > Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2009-12-02 20:00 > Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ > Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset > List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
When I had a guest lecturer talking about Security, and blowing my students minds (not difficult) He had them doing things with command.com, and pointed out that there were 4 ways of starting command, each with different privilege levels from user to administrator. This was on NT4. Peter M. I wish I could remember which method had the Administrator rights! -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2009-12-02 20:00 Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
