I think that we're seeing several of the features that have plagued the security of desktop Windows systems being increasingly incorporated into the desktops of Linux systems. Further, the Linux desktop is truly maturing and, along with that, we're getting closer and closer to a critical mass of users.
So why do I feel that this is a Secure Coding issue and not (just) an OS security issue for Full-Disclosure and similar groups to discuss? IMHO, the issues that we're dealing with get straight to the heart of the design of the desktop environments that are being deployed. Sure, Linux has grown up with an arguably better separation of administrative and desktop users from day one, but even just a user-level email worm can be pretty frustrating (in case you haven't noticed from the size of your inbox in the last month or so).
What you're getting at is that clueless users want dangerous features, and that some programmers don't understand why it's a bad idea to provide them, and/or they don't have the option to leave them out (boss says they have to be there, etc...) Further, cluesless users will pick the dangerous features if it is at all an option, i.e. if they can pick Lookout for Linux as a MUA, they will.
This is from personal experience supporting users, family, etc... that have no understanding of what "happens" to an attachment that they save to disk. If the default directory they save to is not the same default that comes up when they launch Word and do File-Open, they are lost. If/when they ever endup running Linux, their understanding of filesystems is not going to increase.
I don't see a lot of room for secure programmers to help out. Sure, they will not write MUAs that have the bad behavior, and the user will pick a bad one. The programmer can write secure helper apps, but all programs that the MUA can invoke have to be secure. The assumes that the MUA doesn't simply let the user launch ELFs or something.
Ryan
