Hey all,
I have been coming up with a theory the last few weeks, and I'm not sure if it's totally correct (Thus the term theory) but I'd like input from all of you. I've been thinking about this a while, and after a talk with TheHorse early in the morning, I got more interested as he seemed to think I was in one way correct.
Many of you (Well, all of you that are worth your salt) have heard of "MS-DOS". A single tasking, single user OS. I'm sticking with MS-DOS for this, because the IBM version of DOS has multi user capability.
Some peopel bash it for being poor, but it's short comings may actually offer security:
If MS-DOS is single user, another can't log in, or, in theory, take over the machine, as it can't handle the extra user.
If DOS can only do one thing at a time, in theory, it could not be broken into, as it couldn't handle the extra process that would be needed to gain control, or access for that matter.
Now, does this meen that DOS is in fact secure because of it's short comings? I have no idea, I've never tested this enough to say, but it would be interesting to toss it on a box and see.
MS-DOS is also old, but it has been quite stable compared to other OSs released by Microsoft.
I've talked to a few people in mailing lists who say they used to use DOS as a server for a BBS back in the 80's and the boxes would stay up for a year at a time until the power supply needed replaced.
A year of uptime, it can be used on a network, and it can't in theory be broken in to, or "Owned".
Again, it's only a theory of mine, but what do you all think? Could DOS teach new OSs old tricks?
Single user and single tasking, so launch a program like a BBS server, put it on the network, and no one should be able to break in or take over, because it won't be able to handle the process they need to run, or another user.
Again, I'm talking about MS-DOS, and old versions of DOS. The Single user Single tasking kind. The version of DOS with multi user capabilities is DOS 2000. I have a link in my OS paper I've been writing, but also a google search should find it for you.
Back to the topic:
DOS has browsers that will run on it, and so, who agrees with me theory? Do any of you think DOS is secure because it can't handle more than one application or user at a time? What are your thoughts?