sudo: what is the point?

[Arnold Maestre]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 12:59:39 +0000, rec.sea at btopenworld.com
<rec.sea at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> > Exactly. From the man page: "sudo allows a permitted user to execute a
> > command as the superuser or another user, as specified in the sudoers
> > file."
> 
> What about security? It is a potential door.
> 
> What do you think?

The sudoers file is managed by the sysadmin: it's up to him to
delegate wisely. From that point, regular sudo operations still
require a password, so from an attacker's perspective, there is still
a lock to bypass. As long as not everybody on a system gets root
privileges, it's even a bit more secure than using the root account:
an attacker does not know which account he has to break in in order to
get superuser privileges...
-- 
Arnold Maestre