Root as Primary Login: Why Not?

A user writes, "I help moderate a forum dealing with Mac OS X, and I'm having an awful time convincing a fair portion of our readers that logging in as root all the time is a Really Bad Idea. Worse, though, are the ones who try to convince others to log in as root all the time, claiming it's 'more Mac-OS-9-like,' or saying 'it's not really more insecure,' or even that 'a firewall should deter hackers pretty well.' I know all the standard arguments, but they're not working out. Does anyone here have some real-world anecdotes that I can point to?"

Comments

Re:Why i have to log in as root.

[lexarius]

Well, you could have a script run at boot time to connect the adsl, or one that is set to run as root no matter who runs it.

As for the original poster, I don't know what to say. In OS X root still has to give his password for authentication screens. The only convenience I can really see it having is to mess around with system libraries and configuration files unchecked. Oh yeah, thats right. Most unices aren't very vulnerable to virii because the user isn't root, so the virus can't get at the important things. The most a trojan could do is take out your home directory. Your system would still run.

Of course, logging in as root makes the system slightly more vulnerable to local attacks, but that isn't saying much.

Cmd-S during boot-up.
fsck -y
mount /
SystemStarter
passwd root

System compromised.
But thats a feature. I think it can be disabled, possibly by supplying an OpenFirmware password... auto-logging in as root sort of ruins that, though.
If people want security similar to Windows, tell them to run as root. OS9 is somewhat more "secure" than OSX because it was meant to be stupid-proof. Running as root in OSX is like telling the computer you really know what you're doing. If you don't, you shouldn't.

Here's one.

[Eagle7]

Let's say that you want to change the permissions of all the files in your home directory to go-rwx (which make sense). So, you type:

chmod go-rwx ~/*

But by mistake, you hit the space bar, and get:

chmod go-rwx ~ /*

By the time you realize the hard disk has churned too long, you'd just gone and wiped the permissions on /bin, /sbin, /var, etc. You're system is now screwed up to the point where it's probably faster to reinstall than change all the permissions. If you weren't root, you'd see something like this (from a Linux-PPC box):

[pts/2@tardis:/home/dmorriso @00:45] chmod go-rwx ~ /*
chmod: /bin: Operation not permitted
chmod: /boot: Operation not permitted
chmod: /dev: Operation not permitted
chmod: /etc: Operation not permitted
chmod: /home: Operation not permitted
chmod: /lib: Operation not permitted
chmod: /lost+found: Operation not permitted
chmod: /mnt: Operation not permitted
chmod: /opt: Operation not permitted
chmod: /proc: Operation not permitted
chmod: /root: Operation not permitted
chmod: /sbin: Operation not permitted
chmod: /tmp: Operation not permitted
chmod: /usr: Operation not permitted
chmod: /var: Operation not permitted
[pts/2@tardis:/home/dmorriso @00:46]

And yes, back in the day, I did make this oops and had to reinstall, because I had used su rather than sudo, and had forgotten to un-su. I started using sudo right afterwards. :)