Comment by crmd

10 months ago

Corp IT recently banned my Indy with IRIX 6.5.32 daily driver from the network for some bureaucratic reason. I feel your pain.

I'm confused. Is this sarcasm? Your OS was last released, according to Wiki, in Aug 2006. How can it possibly be secure?

  • I doubt it’s a target unless someone was actively profiling the company in question, building out a plan, and seeking to actively exploit the company’s network from that machine. Even then, how many attackers know IRIX well enough to pull it off?

    If we were talking about a networked DOS machine, Windows XP, or even classic MacOS this lack of updates would be more serious… but niche UNIX workstations? Not as certain they’re still targets.

  • It wasn’t that secure from the start. The lpr user was a nice way to get into Irix.

    That said, my favorite Unix.

    • It definitely wasn't! I remember the irix 5.x and earlier days. By default, it shipped without any X11 authentication enabled. This meant everyone on the network could keylog your machine.