[NCLUG] Why not Root?

[Chad Perrin]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 07:54:51PM -0600, John L. Bass wrote:
> Bill Thorson <bill at tstorms.com> writes:
> > If you are using the default gnome.  There is a "Network Configuration" 
> > tool which requests root password and then lists your network devices. 
> > When you select one and click 'edit' you see as one of your options 
> > "Allow all users to enable and disable the device."  This worked for me.
> 
> The security aspects of this are very interesting, as providing root
> password for the scripts greatly increases the working set of applications
> and scripts that need to be verified as "trusted". In general this increases
> the risk of a local machine security flaw, by having even more code in the
> "must be trusted" class.

. . . and yet, you can't seem to grasp that it's a bad idea to run
*everything* as root.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"A script is what you give the actors.  A program
is what you give the audience." - Larry Wall