.bashrc can only be edited if the account is otherwise compromised. If the account is compromised, then there is an arbitrary number of ways to attack it from within (for example, you could trivially leave a little daemon running as that user to capture passwords and instruct cron to restart it after reboots, or if they're a desktop user you could arrange for GNOME to start up your keylogger any time they log in). Fundamentally, users have the right to start programs with their own privileges, and rightly expect that with a modern system they will be able to configure the system to do that for them automatically (at various levels of expertise, whether in .bashrc or with "Add to Panel..." or whatever); the security boundary is around the account, not within it. Removing the .bashrc facility, worrying about how to execute sudo, and so on is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Furthermore, there comes a point where removing convenience to gain tiny amounts of security is counterproductive. When the system is made sufficiently inconvenient for day-to-day use, users will simply find out (and document for each other) how to use root privileges to disable the inconveniences, and then you're right back to square one only worse because now deployed systems are less consistent and harder to support. We learned this lesson in the Warty cycle when sudo required a password for every escalation to root; as it turned out, the vast majority of our early adopters simply got into the habit of running 'sudo -s' and leaving root shells open because having to authenticate every time was so annoying. (For the same sort of reason, single sign-on is justifiably popular.) With respect, I honestly think this bug should be closed again as Won't Fix for the reasons above. The Ubuntu security team is working on a number of other more effective measures to increase the security of the system, and I think it is appropriate to be able to reject those that are not likely to be effective. -- password stealing via bashrc https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/151831 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
