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Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

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11–20 of 421 posts

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#11
It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes.

Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things really never change.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#13
post #7

Good. It's terrible UX. The security argument is a red herring. It was originally built with no echo because it was easier to turn echo on and off than to echo asterisks. Not for security.

> easier to turn echo on and off than to echo asterisks. One implies the other. You turn echo off. Then you write asterisks. > Not for security. Consider the case of copy and pasting parts of your terminal to build instructions or to share something like a bug report. Or screen sharing in general. You are then leaking the length of your password. This isn't necessarily disastrous for most use cases but it is a negati…

I would be worried more about leaking the timing of the key presses.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#14
Why not just display a single character out of a changing set of characters such as / - \ | (starting with a random one from the set) after every character entered? That way you can be certain whether or not you entered a character but and observer can‘t tell how many characters your password has.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#15
post #11

It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes. Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things…

Ubuntu truly are masters of going all in on being different in a worse way, only to about face soon thereafter.

You'd think by now they'd have learned, but apparently not.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#16
post #11

It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes. Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things…

Is "GNOME OS" really a leading distro?

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#17
post #14

Why not just display a single character out of a changing set of characters such as / - \ | (starting with a random one from the set) after every character entered? That way you can be certain whether or not you entered a character but and observer can‘t tell how many characters your password has.

Because that's still weird and confusing to people and still serves no purpose.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#18
post #7

Good. It's terrible UX. The security argument is a red herring. It was originally built with no echo because it was easier to turn echo on and off than to echo asterisks. Not for security.

> easier to turn echo on and off than to echo asterisks. One implies the other. You turn echo off. Then you write asterisks. > Not for security. Consider the case of copy and pasting parts of your terminal to build instructions or to share something like a bug report. Or screen sharing in general. You are then leaking the length of your password. This isn't necessarily disastrous for most use cases but it is a negati…

Leaking the length of your password is about as bad for security as leaking the fact that you have a password, or that you use sudo.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#19
post #11

It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes. Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things…

It's possible to auth with your fingerprint (or even a YubiKey) in sudo. It's a functionality provided by PAM, after all.

Re: Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

#20
post #11

It's fun, leading edge Linux distros (e.g. GNOME OS) are actually currently removing `sudo` completely in favour of `run0` from systemd, which fixes this "properly" by using Polkit & transient systemd units instead of setuid binaries like sudo. You get a UAC-style prompt, can even auth with your fingerprint just like on other modern OSes. Instead of doing this, Ubuntu is just using a Rust rewrite of sudo. Some things…

How can you stop it asking your password every single time? I asked my LLM and it hallucinated Javascript at me.
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