Misconfiguration of sudo is insecure (Was: Sudo even more secure)

[Tristan Wibberley]

Please reply on sounder, this is now offtopic for -devel

Joel Edwards wrote:
> Unfortunately, it is easy to forget that you are the root user, since it is
> still using your .bashrc file. 'sudo su' works just as well, but it uses the
> roots actual .bashrc

Does it *run* your bashrc?

AFAICS, it changes the PATH, and USER, and the only thing I can think of 
that would be useful to change too is HOME, but that would be more 
dangerous than not.

> Is it just me, or does sudo -s seem like a security problem for forgetful
> people (like myself).

No, not unless you reconfigure sudo to lock down most of the stuff on 
the system. But then *one* user needs to be able to reconfigure sudo, so 
that user account will *always* be the weak link that can break the system.

Maybe Ubuntu should add an admin account as well as the regular user - 
don't ask for an admin password to set, randomly generate it and inform 
the user. Set this account to use fvwm with an initial xterm, and 
restrict the first user to package management.

-- 
Tristan Wibberley