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When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

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Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#31

Post by Swizec »

Daneel_ wrote: post #27
thousand_nights wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except if you're on a team of sysadmins running a fleet of systems not trying to be rude but this doesn't sound like "most people"

Interesting comment actually. I would have assumed that the vast majority of people using Linux are still sysadmins in small and large companies - this is certainly my personal experience. I wonder how many home users there are versus systems managed by sysadmins. I would still think there’s more in the corporate world, while I would think the opposite for Windows.

> I wonder how many home users there are versus systems managed by sysadmins

Isn’t Android the most popular Linux distro these days? Probably also most TV set-top boxes and other IoT devices

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#32

Post by quotemstr »

zoky wrote: post #26
quotemstr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a major annoyance. The system knows perfectly well who I am. I shouldn't have to type my password repeatedly to do things the system knows I can do. The threat model no longer reflects the real world.

The system has no way of knowing who you are. It can’t tell if you’re really you, or just someone who walked by and started using your computer while you got up to go to the bathroom. If you really think the threat model is outdated, why not just run everything as root? Also, you know you can configure sudo to not ask you for a password, right? So why do you need to use a whole new framework and privilege model to ba…

The system does know who I am: the command is coming from me. An attacker doesn't need to elevate privileges to compromise me: he can steal whatever he needs without becoming root. He can replace sudo and steal my password too.

The whole concept of my personal user account needing to elevate to root to make "system" changes is a relict of long-gone days of BBSes, shell accounts, and time sharing. These days, we should minimize friction between the user (almost always singular) and operation of his system. Apps, not users, should be sandboxed.

I think this is another one of those paradigm shifts accomplished only after a lot of people retire.

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#33

Post by wtallis »

weitendorf wrote: post #24
jorvi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strictly defined and controlled. Nowadays, we have users as a vestige, and partially as a hindrance Not so. Multiple users make perfect sense for a household tablet or a gaming PC / console shared between siblings. Concurrent access is rarely a thing anymore, but serial access is a very common use case.

These days if the device is expected to be ~always internet-connected (increasingly a safe bet) it probably makes more sense for both the developers and users to handle multiple users with a remote identity provider (email, individual account for the particular service, etc.) rather than implementing identity per-device. I'm pretty sure gaming consoles have had support for this for a long time (at least since xbox 36…

Remote identity only works well when paired with cloud storage; otherwise, you have a recipe for confusion. It works for game consoles because the scope of what needs to be stored in the cloud per-user is reasonably limited. It is problematic for PCs because the remote identity service is free but the free tiers of OneDrive, iCloud, etc. are too limited to actually hold all of the user's data, and it's hard to clearly delineate what is or isn't synced when taking a mixed approach. Even smartphones have these problems, usually around text messages and full-resolution photos.

It's much better for users to stick with a solution that's simple enough for non-technical users to have a chance of forming an accurate mental model and and have correct expectations about the availability and safety of their data. But that approach doesn't make it as easy to bundle and upsell subscription services, so that's not the usage model commercial operating systems try to promote.

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#34

Post by cedws »

weitendorf wrote: post #20
pram wrote: post #3

It’s a funny artifact because most people today use, and have only used Linux in a “single user” context. The “local system administrator” is me!

I think this is underrated as a design flaw for how Linux tends to be used in 2024. At its most benign it's an anachronism and potential source of complexity, as its worst it's a major source of security vulnerabilities and unintended behavior (eg linux multitenancy was designed for two people in the same lab sharing a server, not for running completely untrusted workloads at huge scale, so it doesn't really implemen…

I agree that multi-user should go away for modern server workloads, however, users are used as a blast door. Mainly because Linux's security model is lacking. systemd for example commonly runs services under separate users to make it more difficult for a compromised application to elevate privileges. Android does something similar AFAIK.

Users should have never became a security boundary to isolate applications, but they unfortunately have, and there's not really an alternative.

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#35

Post by weitendorf »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #30
weitendorf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is underrated as a design flaw for how Linux tends to be used in 2024. At its most benign it's an anachronism and potential source of complexity, as its worst it's a major source of security vulnerabilities and unintended behavior (eg linux multitenancy was designed for two people in the same lab sharing a server, not for running completely untrusted workloads at huge scale, so it doesn't really implemen…

Actually, I have been wondering if using a Linux system as multi-user could be a boon in security. As single user, each and every process has full and complete control of $HOME. Instead, I would prefer all applications were sandboxed to their own little respective areas with minimal access to data unless explicitly authorized. Without going full QubeOS, get some amount of application separation so my photo utility do…

For shared local usage or "pet" (as opposed to cattle) servers I'd agree, and in fact this is close to what Linux was designed for, since I'd consider the multiplexing lab server to also be a semi-trusted environment.

I'm referring more to how Linux is used in vast pools of "cattle" servers in Cloud, locally by eg one main user (who doesn't need multi-user but probably still needs some notion of "admin" and per-program permissions), or in a corporate setting (where the actual identity system is managed remotely). This is probably >99% of Linux environments.

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#37

Post by weitendorf »

cedws wrote: post #34
weitendorf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is underrated as a design flaw for how Linux tends to be used in 2024. At its most benign it's an anachronism and potential source of complexity, as its worst it's a major source of security vulnerabilities and unintended behavior (eg linux multitenancy was designed for two people in the same lab sharing a server, not for running completely untrusted workloads at huge scale, so it doesn't really implemen…

I agree that multi-user should go away for modern server workloads, however, users are used as a blast door. Mainly because Linux's security model is lacking. systemd for example commonly runs services under separate users to make it more difficult for a compromised application to elevate privileges. Android does something similar AFAIK. Users should have never became a security boundary to isolate applications, but…

This is why I think multitenancy is the more important problem (though both are related), because it's the key to solving shared-kernel application permissions without "users". Containers were a step in the right direction but aren't a sufficient security boundary in themselves - what is currently handled by the "container runtime"/sandbox needs to be built into the kernel IMO.

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#38

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

Daneel_ wrote: post #27
thousand_nights wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except if you're on a team of sysadmins running a fleet of systems not trying to be rude but this doesn't sound like "most people"

Interesting comment actually. I would have assumed that the vast majority of people using Linux are still sysadmins in small and large companies - this is certainly my personal experience. I wonder how many home users there are versus systems managed by sysadmins. I would still think there’s more in the corporate world, while I would think the opposite for Windows.

I hate to sound elitist, but I straight-up can’t do any serious coding on anything other than a Linux box. Most of what I do these days is statistical inference on bacterial genomes in the context of antibiotic treatment.

I understand that I’m not the average user, but then again, nobody really is.

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#39

Post by bombcar »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #30
weitendorf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is underrated as a design flaw for how Linux tends to be used in 2024. At its most benign it's an anachronism and potential source of complexity, as its worst it's a major source of security vulnerabilities and unintended behavior (eg linux multitenancy was designed for two people in the same lab sharing a server, not for running completely untrusted workloads at huge scale, so it doesn't really implemen…

Actually, I have been wondering if using a Linux system as multi-user could be a boon in security. As single user, each and every process has full and complete control of $HOME. Instead, I would prefer all applications were sandboxed to their own little respective areas with minimal access to data unless explicitly authorized. Without going full QubeOS, get some amount of application separation so my photo utility do…

Qubes takes that to an extreme: https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/ and runs every application in a virtual machine.

Re: When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019)

#40

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

quotemstr wrote: post #23
zoky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an opaque, finicky, and non-portable solution to a relatively minor problem.

It's a major annoyance. The system knows perfectly well who I am. I shouldn't have to type my password repeatedly to do things the system knows I can do. The threat model no longer reflects the real world.

Okay, then just NOPASSWD yourself?
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