pptp mppe as other than root?

From: stephen (stephen_at_aloss.net)
Date: 09/17/04 

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 03:44:19 GMT

Finally! after much dickering around, swatting, and so on, I've managed to
connect to my employer's windows vpn and access my work files. But I have
to do it as root.

I don't like that. I work for a software shop and there are some very
smart people (yes there are some smart windows geeks) with idle evenings
who love to poke around. As the first linux user in our company to do
this, I'm going to be a target. I prefer that if someone pokes into my box
that they poke into some place that does not have root access to the rest
of my life. They can poke into my work stuff - fine! They know it all
anyway since it's all in the abysmal VSS. But I want to be fairly sure
that they'll get 'access denied' to any other area of my personal life.

Ideally I could put all the vpn components under a group that does not
have access.

Can I do that? I've looked through the docs at
http://pptpclient.sourceforge.net/ and I've googled my fingers sore, but
all I see is stuff like "Solution: you have to be root".

Say it isn't so or say that I'm just being silly and that I'm in some
magically way protected from intrusions.