[NCLUG] Why not Root?

[James DeWitt]

I'd like to request at this point that we focus on persuasive arguments
with practical examples and references to further information if possible.

Thanks,
JD

On Sunday 18 March 2007 1:15:03 pm Chad Perrin wrote:
> 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.