Comparison of Privilege Authorization Features

Comparison Of Privilege Authorization Features

A number of computer operating systems employ security features to help prevent malicious software from gaining sufficient privileges to compromise the computer system. Operating systems lacking such features, such as DOS, Windows implementations prior to Windows NT (and its descendants), CP/M-80, and all Mac operating systems prior to Mac OS X, had only one category of user who was allowed to do anything. With separate execution contexts it is possible for multiple users to store private files, for multiple users to use a computer at the same time, to protect the system against malicious users, and to protect the system against malicious programs. The first multi-user secure system was Multics, which began development in the 1960s; it wasn't until UNIX, BSD, Linux, and NT in the late 80s and early 90s that multi-tasking security contexts were brought to x86, consumer machines.

Read more about Comparison Of Privilege Authorization Features:  Introduction To Implementations, Identifying When Administrative Rights Are Needed

Famous quotes containing the words comparison, privilege and/or features:

    But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The only privilege literature deserves—and this privilege it requires in order to exist—is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.
    Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)

    These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, particolored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.
    Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)