Re: privacy on Unix-servers

From: Erik de Castro Lopo (nospam@mega-nerd.com)
Date: 01/22/03


From: Erik de Castro Lopo <nospam@mega-nerd.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 06:28:12 GMT

steve wrote:
>
> I am user of a Unix-server (actually IRIX) that is connected with the
> internet. I am also quite a newbie on Unix, so my question now is, if
> the administrators (or you call them super-users AFAIK) are able to
> check and read my data that I store in my account.

Yes.

> And could they possibly trace all my actions?

Yes.

> Very probably you can't know how this is in my special case, but maybe
> there are some standards in the Unix-OS architecture that make an
> intrusion into the privacy impossible.

Now, the root user can see everything on the machine. There
is no reliable way of hiding things from a determined root
user.

Erik

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo  nospam@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on 
skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."
- author Robert A. Heinlein on censorship.


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