From: zeus@vxcrna.cern.ch
Subject: A Parable of our times, The three little Pigs
Organization: CERN European Lab for Particle Physics
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 14:33:47 GMT

A Parable.

Once upon there were there were three little pigs who
following the dictates of the narrative built three
houses of straw, wood and brick. All were fully
aware of the dangers of canine predation and took
security measures accordingly.

The brick house Pig was a government contractor who
decided that the only safe way to live was to build
a thick brick wall with no doors or windows and a
steel roof. Testing this against a three megatonne
huffer and puffer he was confident against attack
by all pig eating wolves in the neighborhood.

Having less money the straw and wood house Pigs
had to work for a living. They thus had to have doors and
windows but used a clever method of tightly interwoven
strands which prevented attack if done properly. The
straw house pig was so proud of his that he had the outside
painted in a clear varnish so that everyone could see
how beuatiful it was. He also had an old wood burning stove
from an old farm cottage installed together with an
old oak dresser in which he stored his boxes of high
fibre Muselli.

The Wood house Pig was rather more practical and had the
tightly woven strands painted in thick black tar. "You
never know, it may do some good" he said, "and the nice
thing about tar is that if the wolf comes and tries
to tamper with it I might just spot a paw print or
something".

Straw house pig was very upset by this and taunted wood house
pig about relying on "security through obscurity". Wood
house pig could not understand the fuss that straw house
pig made. After all if anybody did ever figure out a way of
undoing tightly woven strands at least he had his tar to
fall back on, and if someone started unpicking the tar they
would have to be quite carefull if he wasn't going to 
spot them doing it. 

When the big bad wolf came along it turned out that he was
not as expected the grey Wolf commonly seen in those parts
but a brown one. Having studdied the behaviour of Porcus
Mensae (Housebuilding Pigs) he was familliar with the
principle of tightly interwoven strands and knew it to
be a formidible defense. He also knew that the Pigs had
subcontracted the housebuilding to some of the local
villagers who were not always carefull about the way in which
they wove the strands. Because the straw house pig was so
proud of his achievements and displayed the intricate
weftwork for all to see the Wolf quickly spotted a crucial
flaw in the construction and began his huffing and puffing
routine.

After the house had been huffed and puffed down and the 
straw house pig had run off to the wooden house the Wolf surveyed
the Wooden house. Because the weft work was coated with
sticky tar it was very hard to see the pattern of the weave and
spot the weak point.

Undaunted the Wolf appeared at the door dressed as a pig
"Hello I'm brick house pig, the Wolf has blasted the side
of my house away with a thermonuclear device, can I come
in?" Wood and Stwaw house pig were so pleased that their
efforts had been more successfull than brick house pig that
they opened the door to be greeted by the Wolf.

Banging on the door of Brick house pig, Straw and Wood house
pig shouted, "Please let us in, he's going to eat us". Brick
house pig was however on holiday in the South of France at the
time and so didn't see Straw and Wood house pig being roasted
alive on his doorstep.



Dismissing simple security precautions because of an 
ideological beleifis plan stupid. Computers should be as
secure as possible when supplied. If the machine breaks
down, it is the vendors fault. If the machine is broken
into using an attack which has been known for a long time an
that the user has not been warned about it is the manufacturers
fault.

UNIX vendors are simply *NOT* going to sell their systems
unless they shape up. As supplied UNIX is insecure. It is
not the customers responsibility to patch an operating
system for such obvious flaws. 



The Password File should always be protected from unauthorized
access.

System accounts should always have two passwords.

Passwords should be checked against a dictionary.

Default accounts with system privilleges should be disabled.

Newsgroups: comp.security.misc