I don't read through the whole thread (i'm short on time, sorry), but having users would be part of a good security in depth structure. You talk about compromittingdata, but never thing ofotehr thinks. For example: i have acess for some seconds to the phone. runnign as root, i change the dns to point to evil.com, which simply mirrors anotehr dns, with the little addition that bank.com goes to evil-phishing-copy-of-my-bank.com, and nowing the phone's owner, i probably know his bank. Other use case: i go to starbucks, someone accesses my phone, and opens a simple two-way ssh tunnel to evil.com. Then, when the moko islogged in the fortune-500 company this guy works for, the bad guy logs in through this ssh-tunnel (going through gprs), and is behind the firewalls, ids, etc, all undetected. You want more use cases?
On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Robert Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Joerg Reisenweber wrote: >> If you have root AND user, root can make a backup copy of user's valuable >> data >> every once in a while, and user or the virus she imported while browsing the >> web can NOT destroy this backup. >> I can't follow your arguments. It's NOT an evil person we need to fence in, >> it's bad behaviour of applications that go nuts on (virus|bug|user fault|*) >> >> If we don't start to care about this topic NOW, we will see lots of poor >> designed apps that rely on having root access where they shouldn't, and we >> end up in a situation like M$, where the whole system is so much root-centric >> that you simply can't switch to a sane user-management anymore, because it >> would break half the system. To fix those apps later is a major PITA. >> >> I just "talked" to Wolfgang Spraul and he answered >> "But right now we are selling to hardcore developers only, so it's not >> our #1 priority. >> Once our software becomes more stable and mature, this needs to be >> addressed seriously. The good news is that the FOSS community is >> pretty paranoid about this, so I'm sure over time we will have a good >> solution." >> It's a FOSS project and you are "the community", so just contribute! I'd say, >> do it *now*, as long as it's easy. >> >> cheers >> jOERG >> > Hear hear. > > I would be willing to sacrifice any future features in favour of working > on this first. > > As I think about the implications of this more and more its clear: > > Linux wins the security war not because of technology BUT BECAUSE OF OUR > CULTURE. > > It is the culture of our users that makes us safer. Hell, even Ubuntu > is able to get noobs to follow the simplest security measures such as > not running as root, surely we can do the same. > > I say let's learn from the mistake of M$ and lets out think then because > we sure as hell aren't going to outcompete them. > > Rob > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community > -- George Carlin - "Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stu... _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community