[ale] Sunday 05-22-05 6PM RUN-AS-ROOT CHALLENGE

George Carless kafka at antichri.st
Wed May 18 12:57:53 EDT 2005


On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 10:11:53AM -0500, ChangingLINKS.com wrote:
> > your ability to restore to a clean state quickly is NOT what this
> > discussion is about.  Anybody can image a drive, keep a hot-swap, or
> > whatnot.  That's not the point.
> >
> > --George
> 
> Oh GEEZ!
> 
> Go back through the thread, Carless.
> What IS the point?
> The point (now) is whether or not Linux can be run as root safely.
> Some say "No." They give a list of reasons why including:
> The machine becoming a zombie, less security, fumble fingers, etc.
> 
> By structuring the challenge THIS WAY (as in "do ANYTHING to my box") I am 
> allowing for all of those "bad things" to happen. The worst of the worst. 
> Bring everything you listed WHILE I am running as root.

You have conveniently left out the text that I responded to:

> The challenge will have no "tie." I will either restore the system back to
> clean state quickly (and outline how I did so), or I lose the competition.

Which implies that your criterion for "safety" simply involves whether you can 
"restore the system".  This is not what most people mean by "safety".  

And, again, if you ARE running from a live CD type of thing, then all of this 
has been quite the waste of time, since our reference points are not the same.  
If this is the case, I think you have been disingenuous rather than clever; one 
might as easily modify all references to "root" to, say, "superadmin", then 
create a regular user account named "root" and claim that running as root was 
safe, creating as much controversy with as little merit.  Now, sure, this comes 
down to 'assumptions'; but all of human interaction through language involves 
certain assumptions, and if your argument balances on such a nicety as this 
then you're more of a troll than I had imagined.

--George

--------------------------------------
George Carless ... kafka at antichri.st
Words are just dust in deserts of sound



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