Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sudo vs. Root

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @03:37AM from the security-comes-first dept.

lessthan0 writes "In Mac OS X, the root account is disabled by default. The first user account created is added to the admin group and that user can use the sudo command to execute other commands as root. The conventional wisdom is that sudo is the most secure way to run root commands, but a closer look reveals a picture that is not so clear." The article is about OSX but the debate is a little older ;)

1 of 327 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

This just in: by djh101010 · 2006-03-21 03:44 · Score: 5, Informative

News flash: Sudo, like many other tools, has a configuration file, which allows you to customize it's behavior. Details will be provided as they become available.

C'mon, anyone with even a passing involvement with sudo has looked at the sudoers file. You can configure pretty much any group or role based permission you want; if you can describe it as a logical statement, you can do it in sudo. Yes, out of the box, you can sudo to a shell (or to an app which has a shell escape).