[CentOS] Another Fedora decision

Tue Feb 3 18:08:11 UTC 2015
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 11:48 AM, Valeri Galtsev
<galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>> I think the intent is: "Don't use a password likely to be included in
>> the list that an attacker would try". Of course if services would
>> rate-limit the failures
>
> Which sysadmins do for ages when they configure their machines. And I
> don't think any system will ever come from system vendor fully prepared to
> serve anything necessary, and tightened to best requirements (which depend
> on box designation anyway).

Really?  Are vendors not capable of shipping something with good
default settings?   It seems like getting a new car and having to
install a different engine yourself because the factory couldn't
figure out how to do it.

> So, system vendors can do better, but there
> always will be need for you to do your sysadmin's part.

If that were really true, then you also wouldn't be able to follow
anyone else's advice about how to do it. That is, if your system
really needs to be so different that it couldn't have been shipped
with the configuration you need, then a book couldn't tell you that
either.

> Sounds almost like
> job security. As one of my friends says: all systems suck, and thanks to
> that got our jobs ;-)

But wouldn't you rather be doing something new/different instead of
just fixing things that should have been done right in the first
place?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com