sudo (was Re: basic - continued)

[Knapp]

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 10:10 PM, Johnneylee Rollins
<johnneylee.rollins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 1:05 PM, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 9:12 PM, Smoot Carl-Mitchell <smoot at tic.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 2010-02-06 at 16:02 +0000, Graham Todd wrote:
>>>
>>>> Of course, if you do enter the superuser account, by setting a password
>>>> for it for example, you run the risk of getting rootkits installed,
>>>> which is the reason I believe all systems should have effective rootkit
>>>> cleaners installed by default.  But if you use only sudo to access root
>>>> privileges isn't the danger from rootkits (and their kin) vastly
>>>> reduced?
>>>>
>>>> Am I incorrect?  Is the danger with sudo as great, or is sudo a barrier?
>>>
>>> sudoing to root gives you all the same privileges as logging in as root.
>>> It is only a barrier if used prudently.  Any program run with root
>>> privileges can gain access to the entire system.
>>> --
>>> Smoot Carl-Mitchell
>>
>> My understanding of SU vs SUDO is that sudo lets you do su stuff but
>> leaves behind your name in the records.
>>
>>
> You'd be wrong.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_(Unix)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo
> Read those, they're helpful.
>
> ~SpaceGhost

OK, so then su lets anyone do anything but sudo only lets you do what
sudoer says you can do per user. In other words sudo can limit what
one user can and can't do but with su the user could do anything.

-- 
Douglas E Knapp

Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/