Re: [Off Topic] Re: Linux security

Jim Richardson wrote:

On Sat, 2006-05-06 at 11:50 +0800, Michael Richter wrote:
On 05/05/06, Peter Garrett <peter.garrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 5 May 2006 13:42:52 +0800
"Michael Richter" <ttmrichter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> cd /
> <enter a string of commands here and, in the process, forget
where you are>
> rm -fR * .old
>
> What was that about "sane defaults" and "graceful error
recovery" that
> someone else was blathering on about again? There's not so
much as a "are
> you sure you want to kill your system?"-style error message
there. The
> "sane default" is to trash your whole file system. From a
moment's
> inattention.

Quite true. Of course if the user concerned is using Ubuntu,
and has not
enabled a root password, it becomes less likely (not
impossible by any
means, just less likely).

sudo -s
<enter password>
cd /
<do a lot of stuff>
rm -fR * .old

Or, for that matter, as you pointed out, just do it in your home
directory as yourself. As was pointed out before users don't care
about system files (which are semi-trivial to replace). They care
about user files. And the "sane default" and "graceful failure" of
UNIX systems is to trash everything without so much as a "are you sure
about this?" -- something that DOS did in its first incarnation!


That's not the default, if it was the default, you wouldn't need the -f
flag. you *told* it to not bother you with questions, to just do it.

The -f flag is not necessary for this example. rm -r as root will do plenty
of damage.
--
derek


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