Package Manager Denies Permission to Install

[Kam Leo]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan
<pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
>> Richard Hughes wrote:
>>> Sure, but my point if that GTK code is untrusted, and just not designed
>>> to be run with elevated privileges. A buffer-overflow is an easy exploit
>>> if the code is running as uid 0, whether running as setuid or as root.
>>
>> Why would you overflow a buffer on your own machine where you're already
>> root? It makes sense to attack a setuid binary on a machine you're not root
>> on, but it doesn't make sense to attack your own machine.
>
> Really?  In that case I invite you to visit my website evil.com and
> click on a few links. Better still, log into my friendly server and
> run a few of my apps. They're running on my machine, not yours. Of
> course the GUI runs on your machine via X11 ...
>
> poc

A GUI is not required to compromise a machine. No need to go after the
root user either. Take a gander here:
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/blogcategory/89/102/7/0/