[Off Topic] Re: Linux security

[Michael Richter]

On 05/05/06, Peter Garrett <peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 5 May 2006 13:42:52 +0800
> "Michael Richter" <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > cd /
> > <enter a string of commands here and, in the process, forget where you
> are>
> > rm -fR * .old
> >
> > What was that about "sane defaults" and "graceful error recovery" that
> > someone else was blathering on about again?  There's not so much as a
> "are
> > you sure you want to kill your system?"-style error message there.  The
> > "sane default" is to trash your whole file system.  From a moment's
> > inattention.
>
> Quite true. Of course if the user concerned is using Ubuntu, and has not
> enabled a root password, it becomes less likely (not impossible by any
> means, just less likely).


sudo -s
<enter password>
cd /
<do a lot of stuff>
rm -fR * .old

Or, for that matter, as you pointed out, just do it in your home directory
as yourself.  As was pointed out before users don't care about system files
(which are semi-trivial to replace).  They care about user files.  And the
"sane default" and "graceful failure" of UNIX systems is to trash everything
without so much as a "are you sure about this?" -- something that DOS did in
its first incarnation!
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