Aspects of Biological Evolution and Their Implications for Unix Computer Security

During future evolution of the OS, Unix vendors will have to deal with the conflicting needs for stability and backward compatibility of applications versus the ever increasing need for security. Certainly market forces will drive this process. It is interesting to speculate how the continued presence of these 'historic' programs in a modern OS will be managed as knowledge of their use fades. Here it is interesting to note that a casual examination of several recent books on administering Unix systems no longer give significant coverage to UUCP (for example see Nemeth et al. 2001; Freeland McKay & Parkinson 2001; Frisch 1995). While the R utilities are still discussed they are generally dismissed and administrators are simply advised to turn them off. One wonders if this knowledge will go the way of UUCP in the next edition of the same books.