On running gui applications as root

[Ian Malone]

On 18 November 2015 at 20:09, Adam Jackson <ajax at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2015-11-18 at 11:53 -0800, Andrew Lutomirski wrote:
>
>> I don't understand.  If a user who has the right to act as root asks
>> to authorize a program to run as root on their behalf, we should grant
>> that request.  And, once we grant it, we shouldn't be
>> passive-aggressive and say "sure you can run it, but no graphics for
>> you!".
>
> The point is, if things in Fedora require "run this bit of GUI as root"
> in order to function, we've done a poor job. That people have bad
> habits already is not sufficient justification to encourage them to
> have more.
>
> To the bug in question: probably we should make it so 'sudo gedit' does
> work, but I'd still strongly discourage anyone from actually doing so.
>

Not really getting this. For any configuration task where you replace
editing a root owned text file with access through some authorised
gui, that gui is still vulnerable. It may have theoretically reduced
risks (assuming its permission to alter things is suitably locked
down, not sure how well that is down generally), but it still has them
and potential vulnerabilities. Versus being able to use a text editor,
which is necessary for people using customised systems even in the
hypothetical world where everything provided by fedora provides a
perfect tool for configuring it. My conclusion would be better
security and controls for gui tools that need general access to root
owned resources.

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk