[Info-vax] Questions and observations about OpenVMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-03-07 20:29:33 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <s2302h$sbd$1 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley 
> <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes: 
> 
>> That works great until the local network gets compromised.
> 
> If the local network gets compromised, you likely have much bigger 
> problems than insecure DECnet on that network.

Modern networks best assume compromise.

The difference here in the approaches used and the processes involved 
is fundamentally different from some of the classic OpenVMS designs, 
too.

Apps and system interfaces that expect and seek to contain damage, 
rather than assuming perfection.

The same expectations of flaws within system configurations and network 
configurations.

And the expectations of flaws within the humans using and maintaining 
and creating the networks and the apps.

Expecting (hoping for) forever-long server uptimes is a fundamentally 
problematic approach.

How this assumption-of-errors approach works with networks:
"Access to services must not be determined by the network from which 
you connect 
Access to services is granted based on contextual factors from the user 
and their device
Access to services must be authenticated, authorized, and encrypted"

With app development and app deployment and app security designs, this 
ties back to BSD-style pledge mechanisms—which were discussed for 
OpenVMS at one point—and to jails/sandboxes.  To isolating and 
containing vulnerabilities. We're not going to reach perfect apps and 
perfect systems and perfect networks and perfect uptimes. Many 
deployments having tried for that goal of perfection for decades, too.

And there are side effects or side benefits, too. Building on 
brute-force server uptime also means the server is inevitably running 
ever-older software. With assumptions of issues, fail-overs can be used 
to maintain and to update servers and apps. OpenVMS Clustering plays 
here too, though clustering could definitely play better here.

>> VMS Mail got altered a decade or two back to stop displaying some 
>> escape sequences in an email to stop them causing abuse. I don't know 
>> the details as they were never published in the notice I remember 
>> seeing.
> 
> Characters with ASCII codes higher than } are displayed as $.

There are many limits to the OpenVMS mail client. ASCII is one. MIME is 
another. That the mail server is local and with a lack of support for 
remote server access, too. Etc.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC