Apple patches Mac OS X flaws

TalkBack 40 of 49:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

It certainly was multi-user

Multi-user refers to an OS that recognizes different authentication/authorization tokens for different users. You could run many services on NT as different users and if a service was breached, the attacker only had the rights of the service's account. In that sense of the word, NT was 100% multi-user.

Don't confuse a human user with a computer account. If you think of the OS and the GUI as being two totally separate things (which they are), the NT OS was 100% multi-user but the default GUI only allowed for one human user logged on as one computer account at a time. Terminal Server was one way around that if you really needed that functionality.

Why the distinction between humans and accounts? Multiple computer accounts, some with restricted rights, is what is necessary for computer security and NT had that. Allowing a human to be more than one account at a time, or allowing more than one human to log onto a machine at one time is a nice feature but really has nothing to do with security.

Posted by: NonZealot   Posted on: 03/22/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
• Server Consolidation and Containment With Virtual Infrastructure VMware To meet the constant demand to deploy, maintain and grow a broad array of ... Download Now