Re: Root Password

[Alistair Lambie <alambie@relay.csd.sgi.com>]

Pete Young wrote:
> 
> > hehe... well, that will work to, I guess... :-)
> 
> Well, it did for me with an Indy running 5.3 .
> 
> As an aside, Irix as shipped has to be the most simple unix variant to
> break that I've ever come across. Why on earth does all that stuff have
> to run setuid root? Never thought I'd be advocating a switch to Linux
> on security grounds, but there you go!
> 

I think that may be a bit unfair.  Irix 5.3 is real old (Nov 17, 1994)
and while it had many security issues I think a lot of other vendors
probably did as well in that time frame.  There are a lot of security
patches available for Irix 5.3 and I'm guessing they are probably not
loaded on the machine you are using.  These patches are made available
to everyone regardless of whether you have a support contract or not. 
You can find information at
http://www.sgi.com/Support/security/security.html  If you find something
that is not fixed you can report it at that site as well.  

Cheers, Alistair

-- 
Alistair Lambie                                alambie@csd.sgi.com
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