-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Harry Putnam wrote: > Jim Hyslop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >>>How is that true with a single user home machine? >> >>Security 101: Viruses, Trojan horses, Sony DRM rootkits and so on. The >>effects of many of these malware are severely curtailed if you are not >>running as root. > > > That all sound pretty far fetched... first off, if all that stuff is > running or installed, someone has root already. It won't matter what > I run as. > > Not to be argumentative but I still don't see the big deal. If my > machine is rooted I'm already sunk.
And if your machine is not yet rooted, you want to keep it that way, don't you? That's the goal here. One of the basic premises of security is "minimize your risk of exposure." If you habitually log in and work as root, then every program you run has root privileges. You are creating a huge risk of exposure - if you accidentally trigger a Trojan horse, you've just given it carte blanche access to your system. On the other hand, if you run with ordinary user privileges and only invoke `su' (or, in Windows, 'runas') when absolutely necessary, then that Trojan horse won't be able to get a foothold in the first place. - -- Jim Hyslop Dreampossible: Better software. Simply. http://www.dreampossible.ca Consulting * Mentoring * Training in C/C++ * OOD * SW Development & Practices * Version Management -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFD43ZPLdDyDwyJw+MRArQwAKCr3fpINKo0r5VAEGOPgGR5hE+IsgCdFr9H 4EtwyMEA7DKbFZyfUuKz4tU= =W4v3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Info-cvs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-cvs
