FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] Re: Add-ons/Module problems/ideas??

["Bruno G. Albuquerque" <bga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Abraham Egnor wrote:

> > > So have a bypass key that you can press on startup.  Anyway, the kind of
> > > problem you describe isn't unique to this idea; if there's any way to run
> > > applications on startup it could happen.
> > 
> > It is different having an option to do that and making that automatic. 
> > What Helmar sugested was that all apps the user had opened when the 
> > computer shutdown would be reopened when it restarted.
> 
> I still don't really see a problem.  Two possibilities: buggy program or
> malicious program.  If it's buggy, and it makes the computer crash, it
> should be easy enough to detect on startup that it wasn't a normal
> shutdown and not do the restore-apps thing.  If it's malicious, this
> doesn't really open any new doors: there are already hooks in 5.0.3 to
> make programs run at startup, so it could cause the same problem without
> this feature.

Sometime ago a discussion about the fact that Deskbar would auto-load any 
replicants it would found without the user asking it to or not resulted in 
Marco Nelissen implementing the Deskbar Security patch for OpenTracker.

The reason I say that is to show that if we know about some security risk 
like that we must do something and fix it and not introduce another one 
"it could cause the same problem without this feature".

Anyway, this is just my humble opinion. I know I will not be implementing 
something like that in OpenBeOS and I will be the firs one to disable it 
in my builds if it is implemented. Others my think different and I am fine 
with that.

-Bruno