Re: dangerous to leave root logged in?

From: Rincewind (rinso_at_unseen.edu)
Date: 03/30/05 

Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:01:43 GMT

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:17:53 +0000, Julia Thorne mumbled something like
this:

> So... what IS that vulnerability? I wouldn't be surpised to hear that
> there is one (I'd be surprised if there isn't), but what IS that
> vulnerability?

If you have a logged in root shell, say on the console, Ctrl-Alt-F1, or on
a second X server(say localhost:1), and you allow joe user physical access
to the system, there is nothing to prevent joe user from pressing
Ctrl-Alt-F1 or Ctrl-Alt-F8 and using your open root session. This is not
desirable.

If a process needs to run as root and needs to run all the time, it is
probably better to run it in the background from an init script. 

-- 
Rinso
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