[Info-vax] OpenVMS x64 Atom project

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 6/3/2021 1:04 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 6/3/21 9:39 AM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 6/3/2021 8:11 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> VMS is missing security protections common in other operating systems.
>>
>> You mean all those "secure" systems that are constantly being hacked, 
>> invaded with ransomware and such.  Are those the "common security 
>> protections" you're talking about?
>>
>> Perhaps I'd rather be not as "secure" ...
> 
> Either you don;lt understand any of this or you just haven't been paying
> attention.  The places being hit are, in most of the stated cases, not
> using any of the accepted security practices.

The fact that it happened prove that they did something wrong.

But they may have done 99 things right and only missed 1.

That is the underlying problem in this: to protect a system you need to
protect against all attacks - to successfully attack a system you
only need to fine one that is not protected against.

> Why are critical systems even on the Internet?  Why do these people not
> have backups to fall back on? (I worked in the CS Dept. of a University.
> Not what most people would consider in any way critical.
> 
> My backup scheme would  have allowed me to resume operations with no
> more than a  4 hour loss of data.  I did that with no additional budet
> and running strictly COTS.)

Backup is definitely good.

But it can be a bit more tricky than what you describe:
* if the malware came in a week or a month ago then just restoring
   latest backup will also restore the malware
* unless all backups being restored was taken as a snapshot
   at the exact same time then restore of backups on multiple systems may
   result in inconsistencies
* a total restore of everything may take significant time especially
   if not enough people to work on all systems in parallel

Arne