On Monday 01 March 2004 3:42 pm, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
sudo _should_not_ allow you to operate root priv w/o password unless you have specifically altered /etc/sudoers. And if you did, you apparently do not care about security.
I'd say that the security one needs depends on one's situation. In my case I have a home network sitting behind a router, so there are two kinds of possible threats: ones originating from within my house and ones from outside. The ones from within the house I don't worry about, particularly since a malevolent person with time and knowledge could do just about anything by rebooting from a rescue CD (and there aren't any malevolent persons around as far as I know). As to the outside, the router is a pretty effective firewall; even an intruder who knew my root password would have a very hard time putting it to destructive use. Things like email viruses are another matter, but so far the virus writers don't seem to consider Linux mailers a worthwhile target. Paul Abrahams