Cyberspace Communications Inc

Description

The security problems on Grex are a little different than those other systems have to deal with. On most systems, the first layer of security is preventing unauthorized people from logging in to the computer. But the whole point of Grex is to give away free accounts to total strangers. We want unauthorized people to log into our system. From a security standpoint, this is both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side, we don't have to worry about mysterious people somehow logging into our system, because that happens all the time anyway. Some things that are considered secret on other systems aren't secret here. For example, on most Unix systems, the login program responds to all errors with the message "Login incorrect". They don't differentiate between a bad login name or a bad password for a perfectly good login name, because they don't want to give hackers any clue about which login names exist. But Grex's login program has been modified to give messages like "Password Incorrect" and "No Such Login". Since anyone can get on our system, the full list of login names is no secret. Making the messages more helpful means staff gets fewer requests for help and the requests we get are less confused. On the negative side, we don't have that first layer of security that other systems do, and we do still have things we need to keep secure. To understand our approach to security, it is important to first understand what our goals are...

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