Re: Windows Update: A single point of failure for the world's economy?

On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Paul Schmehl wrote:

> > Enabling a world-wide auto-update feature does indeed seem much of a
> > security risk to me.
> >
> More of a risk than up2date for RedHat or emerge -u system for Gentoo? Or
> cvsup for *BSD?

cvsup (or cvs) to update to new operating system or ports/pkgsrc sources
is different because:

- you don't get the final product; the binaries are not built
  automatically nor installed.

- it is used to build from source; and the source code changes can
  be compared and reviewed by anyone.

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/

p.s. If you are a pkgsrc user, be sure to install and use
security/audit-packages.

p.p.s. I help run a BSD security update service; I don't think any of our
customers automatically upgrade with security updates although it is
possible.
Received on Sep 04 2003