Re: security problem with fat32 on suse 9.0

From: /dev/rob0 (rob0_at_gmx.co.uk)
Date: 01/28/04 

Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:03:31 -0800

In article <bv8ovi$phbhn$1@ID-47665.news.uni-berlin.de>,
  Gregor Ries wrote:
> NeoSadist wrote:
>> Experience: fat32 is insecure and has lots of virii that can attack it.
>> Advice: find a different way to do what you need without using FAT32.
>>
> You are completely right - but I need to have dataexchange on one

Is he? This is news to me. What can a virus do to a FAT32 filesystem?
What vulnerabilities are specific to FAT32 (or to any type of DOS
filesystem, for that matter)?

Yes, it could be erased if some viral code executes under a DOS or
Windows OS. It could similarly be erased using "rm -rf /path-to/vfat"!
This has nothing to do with the filesystem!

> computersystem - and for this fat 32 is the only solution I know....

Let's nip the FUD in the bud.

FAT filesystems are well-supported under just about any OS you might
care to use -- MS's forced-upgrade policies for Win95 retail and WinNT
notwithstanding. There is absolutely nothing wrong from a security
standpoint with FAT32 (the vfat driver in Linux.) Simply be aware that
DOS filesystems are too primitive to support ownership and permission
attributes.

> So if you have nevertheless an idea for such unsecure filesystem...

IIRC from your OP, your answers should all be found in the man pages for
mount(8) and fstab(5). 

-- 
  /dev/rob0 - preferred_email=i$((28*28+28))@softhome.net
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