h a l f b a k e r yRenovating the wheel
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wuwei.net
The ultimate computer security site | |
Wuwei, in Taoist thought, is the doctrine of nonaction, or non-purposive action.
wuwei.net would make available at no cost a considerable amount of computaing resources in the form of a UNIX-like system where the kernel had been modified to ignore all filesystem and other permissions checking, thus
making it incumbent upon the user base to to the "right thing" and not bolix things up too badly.
People would use and improve upon the system with the explicit knowledge that miscreants, ne'er-do-wells, highwaymen and brigands could have their way with the system at any juncture. Users would need to create their own accounts, and rely on the other users for technical support.
Meatball Wiki: SoftSecurity
http://www.usemod.c.../mb.pl?SoftSecurity
Something very much like this concept, discussed in much more detail. [egnor, Apr 17 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]
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Sounds like an ideal spot for "laundering" your nefarious activities (at least until the rest of the net catches on and black-holes it.)
As such, the miscreants and highwaymen would have an interest in protecting it from the vandals and hooligans. (As if they could...) |
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Okay, suppose that, in addition to permissions checking being disabled, there was a reasonably complete audit trail, and the system required you to authenticate--you can do anything you want, but all actions are logged and traceable back to an individual. |
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Hmm... I suppose that this would be possible, as long as the log is recorded to some sort of
write-once filesystem or medium (eg, a printer). But as long as people have free reign to
modify the system, you run the risk that someone will disable the logging, perhaps even
accidentally. |
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I think hak-nam.net would be a better name for it. |
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I think the concept you're searching for is "soft security". It's a pretty well-known concept among Wiki users. (You'll note that Wiki systems generally have the aspects you propose; anyone can edit anything anytime.) |
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Until surprisingly recently, the systems run by RMS at the FSF ran in much this fashion; see the GNU man page for "su" to catch a glimpse of the motivating philosophy. In the more distant past, much of the Internet ran this way; many campus systems (including the one at the school I attended) used to have a "newuser" or "new" account that you could access (from anywhere!) to create an account for yourself. |
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Users were sometimes nominally protected from each other, but the protection was often advisory at best; file permissions were readable (and sometimes even writable) by default. The Internet was a different place back then. |
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The fact that all those systems have disappeared, hardened, or at least adopted Wiki-like subtle defense systems should be a pretty good demonstration that any such system won't last long in today's climate. In a large enough barrel of apples, there will always be a few bad ones. |
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