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Things were worse before. Real-mode DOS programs relied on the honor system of software developers. Windows 3.x leaked resources if software developers didn't e

Things were worse before. Real-mode DOS programs relied on the honor system of software developers. Windows 3.x leaked resources if software developers didn't explicitly release them. Any program could read and write memory and storage wherever it pleased, for the most part. The reasons we're "stuck" are multifaceted: sheer volume of code, unsafe languages, monolithic kernels, poor UX of security features, and inadequate automated testing (especially of kernel code). seL4 solves the message-passing performance problem of microkernel designs and offers strict capabilities. One major gotcha in most microkernel designs is the need for multi-process side-effect locks, transactions, and rollbacks for mutating hardware state coherently. MINIX 3 made some progress by implementing a NetBSD userland. PS: It's a shame USB didn't include a write-protect tab by default.

mikewarot 5y ago
MS-DOS wasn't much more than a program loader, it wasn't supposed to protect anything. After your program did its worst, the OS was write protected, and the only thing you could mess up would be any floppy disks that weren't write protected. It was trivial to reset to a known good state. It was easy to quantify your risk, as it only had write capabilities to the floppy disks without write-protect tabs. That is what made it possible to just try anything, and not worry about it.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > MS-DOS wasn't much more than a program loader, it wasn't supposed to protect anything. After your program did its worst, the OS was write protected, and the only thing you could mess up would be any floppy disks that weren't write protected. This is obviously only true of MS-DOS on purely floppy-based systems.
  - mikewarot 5y ago
    >This is obviously only true of MS-DOS on purely floppy-based systems. Years ago, it really saddened me to realize that a Dual Floppy IBM PC running MS-DOS was actually the high water mark of secure general purpose computing for the masses.

mikewarot 5y ago

MS-DOS wasn't much more than a program loader, it wasn't supposed to protect anything. After your program did its worst, the OS was write protected, and the only thing you could mess up would be any floppy disks that weren't write protected. It was trivial to reset to a known good state. It was easy to quantify your risk, as it only had write capabilities to the floppy disks without write-protect tabs. That is what made it possible to just try anything, and not worry about it.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> MS-DOS wasn't much more than a program loader, it wasn't supposed to protect anything. After your program did its worst, the OS was write protected, and the only thing you could mess up would be any floppy disks that weren't write protected. This is obviously only true of MS-DOS on purely floppy-based systems.
- mikewarot 5y ago
  >This is obviously only true of MS-DOS on purely floppy-based systems. Years ago, it really saddened me to realize that a Dual Floppy IBM PC running MS-DOS was actually the high water mark of secure general purpose computing for the masses.