this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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As mentioned, to prevent running your text editor with root permissions. It's just security optimization
Let me rephrase my question:
Why would I not want to open nano as root?
No offense, but that sounds like more OCD behavior. ๐ I don't need or want protection against myself, and I even loath the whole "that's not how you're supposed to do it"-mentality of linux (where when commands know very well what you want, instead of doing it, just tell you you forgot something). ๐
sudoedit opens the editor as your user and just writes the file as root. For a single user who is also admin on the system this does not matter in many cases.
In a multi user context you can easily escape your editor and run a shell which allows a non admin user to escalate their privileges. So from a security implementation standpoint this must exist and it does for this reason.
Of course this also prevents some mistakes from happening and a bad plugin cannot destroy your whole system easily and so on. It boils down to good practice.
But, in that example:
If I'm the admin it doesn't matter I use it.
If I'm not it's not my problem that I could get more privileges than allowed. I'd probably even use the possibility then. ๐
So it poses a risk if you allow none-admin users to do that on your system, but I still don't see why I must choose to not use nano as root myself. ๐
Anyway, good practice to me is ease-of-use instead of with 7 protections against things that rarely happen.
Like, I'm pretty sure you are better protected from burglars if you also lock all doors inside your house, but I'm definitely not doing that either. ๐
Edit: Also, if you have users on your system, just chroot/vroot/lxc them, so they be free to 'sudo nano' too... ๐
sudo is not simply a tool to give admin privileges, but a tool to manage elevated permissions or run commands in a different users context.
These things become a lot more relevant once you use the tools professionally. In a well configured system you are only allowed to run the things you are explicitly allowed.
To be completely honest sudo is basically pointless in a single user context. There is almost no reason to even have it installed. It makes dealing with different environments easier though.
Anyway as I said it does not matter in many cases if you are the systems administrator. On the other hand there is also no benefit in getting used to bad practices in case you have to unlearn them later.
One more thing: what you suggest with chroot is one of the very reasons why you should not do that. You might have handed over the keys to break out of chroot. It is a well known vector which boils down to never run anything as root in a chroot environment.
I appreciate all the answers on what started out to mostly be a joke (the first comment, I'm not saying the rest was, I actually do mean my follow-up discussions and am enjoying them more than I should). ๐
Anyway, first I must disagree with sudo being useless in a single-user environment since some services have non-user (nologin) accounts as which you still need to run things sometimes, so sudo is commonly useful in single-user environments (though you could technically go set bash for those, I suppose.)
But yeah, I'm already used to "bad practices" as I have been using linux for 24 years now (when it still was it's predecessor 'pico' ๐ ) (I said over '10' years in an earlier comment, but I just realized I'm 40 and still calculated from 30. ๐ Wishful thinking. ๐ ) in what is assumed a bad practice, not only without any problems, but even because it never gave me problems.
Might be an age thing too, but I hold on to ease of use over best-practice, especially if it hasn't failed me in two decades and a half. I think it would take an actual attack on me abusing this behavior for me to stop doing it by now... And even then, I installed linux so many times in my life, even that seems more musclememory and not such a hassle anymore... ๐ At least I could make use of my backup system for once then... ๐
It's not any OCD behavior, but simply the best practices. You've probably at least minimally familiar with the principal of least privilege? The idea is to minimize scope of a potential problem , was it malicious attack or user error, by restricting access to minimum required to perform a task. It may feel like fighting pedantically (and I've been fighting this more than I'd care to) but it will save your ass one day.
It's probably to protect against any potential security vulnerabilities in the text editor program itself, not to protect you from yourself.
Wouldn't that logic count for anything, including sudo itself?
Sure, but sudo is specifically designed with security in mind as a security program, whereas text editors are not (although I am more likely to trust vim than vscode). Running a malicious program as the user and not as root can help mitigate the impact it could do, even though it will still be able to do a lot as a user.
You assume this malicious code is lame enough not to gain root itself with a modified su.
What do you mean get root itself with a modified su? A program that has been run as a user cannot just get root permissions, that's called a privilege escalation attack and is a serious vulnerability in the kernel which gets fixed quickly when found.
Any attack is usually non-intended vulnarabilities. Same argument applies to any software, like nano, if it can open doors to your system.
Of course it applies to any software, but some programs are more vulnerable than others. For example, when you want to have cryptography in your program, you use an established library, not write the algorithms yourself, because those libraries were written with security in mind (i.e. have protections against different kinds of attacks, for example, side channel attacks, in addition to being implemented properly). The whole point is to minimize the surface of attack, so that your system is more secure. And one way of doing so is to not give root permissions to programs that don't need it (such as text editors like nano).
Yeah, well, as you said: it's probably fixed by now, but I used to have a universal su that would work on any armv7 linux (so basically every phone back then, but also on my armv7 little laptop I had at the time...) with which I was able to easily root any phone by putting it in /data/local and making it bootable, then using full path to move any Android root files in place (though I did also just copy that su itself to /system/bin for root on cheaper phones sometimes, which is just playing with fire as it basically makes any root action unseen and allowed. ๐). That did work for years though, but that's probably cause Android minimizes the linux and never actually updated the kernel so much, and the laptop's flashed OS was something altered with also very little updates. And ARM was still quite new to the public too. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
I remember I came across it in the rooting package for my Kindle Fire and only found out it could do that by accident,... ๐ It couldn't change user, though, it had only 1 use without parameters, which resulted as if you do a 'sudo su' if you remove the sudo password-requirement.
Hence why I used the example. I wasn't being limitative to it, though. There's so many things that could screw you if it has a vulnerability, if it happens I very much doubt it'll be through nano, though.
You can say that just about anything.
sudo grub sudo boot sudo root=/dev/disk/linux sudo kernel-6.1.image sudo init sudo elogind sudo xterm sudo bash sudo nano
Again, like I replied to the other comment, most of the programs you need root for are designed with security in mind and are inherently more secure and have less vulnerabilities than a non security focused program (that is not to say that it is impossible for a security program to have vulnerabilities -it certainly occurred before and keeps occurring- they just have a lot fewer). But even if you need root permissions for a non security focused program, you still shouldn't let any program have it, the whole point is to minimize the surface of attack.