ctl-alt-del/secure attention sequence

[Bengt Richter]

At 01:36 2000-04-13 -0700, you wrote:
>On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Bengt Richter wrote:
>
[...]
>> Personally, I can't see holding on to the ctl-alt-del => reboot behavior on
>> the basis that it is expected on a pc. After all, it was expected mostly
>> because it was needed to make certain legacy OS's easily restartable when
>> they died. BSD is least as far past that as NT, n'est-ce pas? ;-)
>> So I would vote for a change in defaults, or at least asking for root
>> password before doing a reboot.
>
>Err, if you're sitting at the console, why would asking for the root
>password help when you can just hit the big red button or pull the plug?
>
	It would help me because I couldn't reboot by accidental reflex,
but that's not the main point. Obviously, if there are hostile or ignorant
people likely to push the big red button or pull the plug, you have to
secure those physically. Just as obviously, if you leave ctl-alt-del
triggering reboot, you have a remaining problem in that environment.
[...]

>> As it is, even non-users (not having accounts) can press ctl-alt-del at
>> the login prompt, and reboot. IMHO that shouldn't be default behavior.
[...]
>If you have random non-users walking up to your secure system and pressing
>control-alt-delete you have bigger problems than your box rebooting.
>
	I don't see why that would necessarily be true. Random people walk up
to ATMs all the time. An ATM has a display and keyboard. It is pretty secure.
An otherwise ordinary BSD system in a physically secure box, with an ordinary
keyboard should be able to be as secure. I'm sure you could set one up, and
would eliminate the ctl-alt-del direct reboot when you did.

>This isn't the place to argue for getting the FreeBSD defaults changed,
>though. Take that cause up on FreeBSD-current or FreeBSD-stable.
>
	Point taken.
[...]

Regards,
Bengt Richter


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