Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan <at> gmail.com> writes:
On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Tom Horsley <horsley1953 <at> gmail.com>
wrote:
On Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:35:45 -0300 Germán A. Racca wrote:
Anyway, it is safer to use something like VIM to edit files as root, I only tested gedit because I saw your email, but as root I use only VIM to edit files :)
This again? Please give a link to the giant list of exploits that have actually happened because someone ran a GUI program as root. I keep seeing this warning, yet no one has ever provided an actual example of any kind of root exploit happening.
IIRC most comments are about not running the desktop itself as root,
rather than specific apps.
poc
I've found it isn't even something external or malicious. More along the lines of X won't start and one needs to edit xorg.conf (or its predecessors) to fix it using vim or emacs. I've seen people re-install because they couldn't fix X without a GUI editor or broke it worse because they totally jacked up xorg.conf using vi.
Cheers, Dave