Infosec friends, you want to have nightmares tonight? Let me tell you what it was like to work in Silicon Valley in the mid 1990s. I worked at SGI, a major computer manufacturer. When I started, I was given an SGI Indy workstation running IRIX 5.3. It had no root password, setting one up was completely optional. I had full control over all software installed on it, and I could install anything I wanted from our internal dist server, including reinstalling the OS. New OS patches were occasionally available, but finding them and installing them was up to you. That workstation had a publicly routed IPv4 address and was connected to the campus Ethernet, which was in turn connected to the public Internet. There was no firewall, so I could access it from anywhere in the world (and since ssh wasn't much of a thing yet, that connection was unencrypted Telnet). And finally, to add to your nightmare, every workstation ran sendmail and received email directly: you could email me at <name>@sgi.com or directly at <name>@<workstation>.corp.sgi.com, and mail would be routed to my workstation. And yet... it all worked! And if I'm honest, I really miss it. Bad people broke things and ruined the good times for everyone.
@tilton I kind of miss some of that even though I wasn't in tech (or old enough) in the 90s. Because it makes so much sense to send email to the username at the computer name you want to send it to. Or to have a an address that you can actually use to address the machine.
It does not make sense to use a web browser, which is actually an OS inside of your OS, to read and send mail. Or to open a port and not have it available, then allow it in your firewall and still not have it accessible, then have to set up port forwarding in your home router to actually be able to use the port. I know why it is they way it is. But I don't like it as much as your nightmare.
What I do like is VPNs in which a selected (or more or less random) group of interested nerds place free and open net, offers experimental services and stuff. It's the opposite of the internet idea. But semi-small communities are the healthiest ones and the ones where one can have the most fun.
Add comment