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From: Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Wonderful Windows Zaps Banks/Transport/Media after "Update"
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Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2024 07:49:41 -0700
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On 7/31/2024 3:17 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 31/07/2024 10:23, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>> But who tuns a true multiuser system these days especially one where
>>> users can do simple admin?
>>
>> Even disregarding hobbyists, more than zero but I expect the number is
>> indeed rather small.

Not sure what you mean by "hobbyist". To me, a "linux hobbyist" is 
someone like me, who deliberately runs a system at home that is more 
complex and "professional" than necessary, to keep alive some skills 
acquired decades ago when we managed a Unix system used by our department.
But I also use those skills in the small company that still writes me a 
paycheck in my semi-retirement.

>> There’s a few points here:
>>
>> * You can still set a root password and use ‘su’ on Ubuntu systems if
>>    that’s what you want. Canonical are not enforcing a policy here, just
>>    setting a default.

My Linux systems are Fedora rather than Ubuntu; Fedora also promotes sudo.

>> * The ‘sudo instead of su’ model is common everwhere, not just Ubuntu; I
>>    expect the motivation for the default setup on Ubuntu is
>>    simplification, not any theories about who can remember how many
>>    passwords.
>>
>> * Trusting sudo to enforce the a tailored access model is somewhat
>>    optimistic given its CVE record, and the general record of the setuid
>>    model that underpins it.
>>
>> * By escaping the setuid model run0 may improve on this issue, though it
>>    brings other kinds of complexity with it; how it balances out is
>>    probably a question for a few years time.
>>
>> * In the single-user context, sudo effectively creates the model that
>>    your single user account has privileges equivalent to root, but that
>>    you must explicitly mark any privileged operation. The former is just
>>    acknowledging reality, the latter is a useful guard against accidents.
>>
> +1 to all of that.
> 
> I use sudo if its just one thing I need to do, but if its messing with 
> config files and restarting daemons, I use su -

Is that because you do not know about "sudo -i" ?

Note that run0 - which is built on polkit - still relies on setuid 
executables within polkit. I don't see them as all that different.

The grace period in sudo is a convenience. It probably does add a bit of 
risk. There is probably a way to turn it off --- yes: 
timestamp_timeout=0 in /etc/sudoers (apparently per-user)