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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: louis mason who wrote (9955)	8/5/1998 12:41:00 PM
From: ericneu	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

"Back Orifice" is really not a big deal. It does not expose any new security holes. The ability to take over a computer by running a program on it is not new - most of the people here are probably familiar with PCAnywhere. "Back Orifice" has to be loaded on the machine in question before it can do any tricks. If anyone can come in and load software on your machine without your knowledge, you've got more serious problems on your hands. - Eric

To: louis mason who wrote (9955)	8/5/1998 12:53:00 PM
From: Mike Milde	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

From the CNN article, this doesn't appear to be a big deal at all. You have to actually load the program onto the computer that you want to later break into. It's not like you can sit at home with this software and go breaking into computers across the Internet without the user on the other side cooperating. Really, the security risk is that you can't run applications under Microsoft in a protected "sandbox". Java protects you from this, so "hacks" such as Back Orifice won't be possible at some point in the future. Running standard user apps as native binary code is crude and risky. You have no way to keep them in check. They can run wild like Back Orifice, and you'll never know it. (It's the way most apps are written today, but it's still not safe. :-) Mike