On Sun, 23 Jul 2017 12:14:46 -0700
Joe Zeff wrote:
My understanding is that it's too easy to damage your system by
selecting the wrong files to move, rename or delete. Having to type the
names, even with tab completion, is considered safer because you have
more time to think about what you're doing.
That not what people talk about though, they claim there are fundamental
security exploits that can happen simply because I'm running an X app
as the root user.
Just because I can make a bonehead mistake as root isn't an exploit,
that is just a bonehead mistake (and I can make those just as easily
in a root terminal :-). In fact, the supposed solution to the problem
is to run the GUI as a normal user and have some sort of non-GUI
root helper the app talks to, but all that does is re-write a lot of code
while still making it just as easy to make a bonehead mistake.
In fact with something like gparted, I'm absolutely positive I'm LESS
likely to make a bonehead mistake with the GUI than trying to
do the same stuff on the command line.
Nope, what I want is a pointer to the list of exploits that have
really happened because someone ran an X11 program as root.
There must be thousands of them, right? The level of paranoia
about it has to mean that real exploits exist, right? This can't
just be a computer urban legend, can it?