[rescue] NeWS

[der Mouse]

>> [...] - you are handing over the keys to your hardware's most
>> privileged mode, allowing whoever wrote that code to do whatever
>> they might happen to feel like with your system.
> Yes, but that's far less likely,

True.

> and it doesn't happen through an API that was deliberately designed
> to allow it,

What do you think LKMs are, if not that?

> and it is very unlikely to happen from a userland software install
> like it can in Windows.

Only for social reasons.  If the BSDs had the kind of density of
technically unclued game users Windows does, I suspect you'd find
people using whatever they could - including LKMs - to impose similarly
rapacious software there to.

> Aside: mainframe systems addressed things like malicious drivers and
> libraries a long time ago.  Why is it taking so long to see this in
> our current systems?

Because the priorities are very different.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B