From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,bc1361a952ec75ca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-08-01 16:34:26 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!enews.sgi.com!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: tmoran@acm.org Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How Ada could have prevented the Red Code distributed denial of service attack. References: <8766c7h2zm.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> X-Newsreader: Tom's custom newsreader Message-ID: <5m0a7.21097$Kd7.13099003@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 23:34:25 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.7.82.199 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com 996708865 24.7.82.199 (Wed, 01 Aug 2001 16:34:25 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 16:34:25 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:11009 Date: 2001-08-01T23:34:25+00:00 List-Id: > > Of course they also depend on not using hardware designed with > > security in mind. > > Could you elaborate on that, please? In the '60s and '70s there was quite a lot of work on "descriptors" or "capabilities" based architectures. The Burroughs machines (often used by banks, interestingly) used those techniques. The 386 was designed with a lot of support for OS security(1), most of which is unused today. "Protected mode" today means "wide addressing" much more than it means protection. At the very least, one would expect protection against modifying running code (by running past a data buffer). 1) See, for instance, Microprocessors, A Programmer's View, by Dewar and Smosna, p. 90 "Protection Mechanisms".