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Re: [LUG] Advice - Root Log-in

 

On Friday 31 March 2006 9:05 pm, David Bell wrote:
> Is there a *security* 
> risk using Root logins, for purely administering the system, versus su/sudo
> as a user.

You can't just be "administering the system" when logged into a GUI desktop as 
the root user. All manner of GUI related code is being run to support the GUI 
itself. This therefore increases the relative risk because it simply 
increases the amount of code being run as the root user. On a simple basis of 
chance, the number of vulnerabilities will increase as will the probability 
that one of those vulnerabilities will be triggered - independent of any user 
error.

> > In all cases, the user account is preferable

A large proportion (some may say all) of desktop code is written as 
user-level-only code - i.e. it is written, tested and debugged in the 
expectation that it will be run as an ordinary user, not root. 

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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