<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Matthew Garrett <<a href="mailto:mjg@redhat.com">mjg@redhat.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 04:09:15PM +1100, James Morris wrote: > Many users limit their use of the root account to essential system > maintenance, and run general purpose applications as a regular > unprivileged user. I know basically nobody who, on a generally single user system, explicitly switches to a console to log in as root and perform package installs there.</blockquote><div> I do! And I tell everyone else too, so they learn/understand the difference between 'god' and a 'mere mortal user' (ie. root and anyone else). </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> If you're not doing that then the issue is basically moot - a user-level compromise will become a root-level compromise the next time you run anything as root. </blockquote></div> ... snip ...