On Mon, Jun 08, 2020 at 01:54:21PM -0400, Tom Horsley wrote: > > I keep asking for people to point me to the huge list > of exploits that certainly must exist given all the > horrors expressed about running as root. > > No one has ever been able to tell me where to find it.
Running a graphical session as root violates a very basic UNIX principal of separation of access. Root is a special case user because it can (using normal UNIX permissions) access everything. Every bug that tricks a process into allowing it to get at unexpected resources is a bug that is even worse if you're running as root. For example, if you are using a file manager that creates thumbprint images for pictures in the directory it is viewing, any image-rendering exploit now can launch processes that can access everything, not just your user's data. Your web browser is one of the biggest vectors of attack on your computer. Now you've got poorly-secured javascript with the ability to read every file and read all process's memory. Fortunately, we have tools like SELinux that can contain what a service running as root can do, but if you're running your desktop session as root, it's largely uncontained. You're throwing much of the security the OS provides out the window. Windows learned this lesson too, which is why you don't log in and run as Administrator, and you need to get prompted to raise access level. Sure, there are plenty of people who still do it, and they get compromised that much easier. -- Jonathan Billings <billi...@negate.org> _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
