this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It helps protect you because if the application in question is compromised in any way (or has a flaw, i.e. an accidental
rm -rf /*), the only access it has is limited to the user it is run as. If it is run as root, it has full administrative privilege.Not only that: It protects your data. The Unix security model is unfortunately stuck in the 1970s: It protects users from each other. That is a wonderful property, but in todays world you also need to protect the users from the applications they are running: Anything running as your user has access to all your data. And on most computer systems the interesting data is the one the users out there: Cryptogrqphic keys, login information, financial information, ... . Typically users are much more upset to loose their data than about some virus infecting the OS files, those are trivial to fix.
Running anything as anlther user stops that application from having access to most of your data.
@Quail4789 @mik Anything that you execute, yes.
Is your user in the sudo group? The user transmission should not be
The point of security isn't just protecting yourself from the threats you're aware of. Maybe there's a compromise in your distro's password hashing, maybe your password sucks, maybe there's a kernel compromise. Maybe the torrent client isn't a direct route to root, but one step in a convoluted chain of attack. Maybe there are "zero days" that are only called such because the clear web hasn't been made aware yet, but they're floating around on the dark web already. Maybe your passwords get leaked by a flaw in Lemmy's security.
You don't know how much you don't know, so you should be implementing as much good security practices as you can. It's called the "Swiss Cheese" model of security: you layer enough so that the holes in one layer are blocked by a different layer.
Plus, keeping strong security measures in place for something that's almost always internet connected is a good idea regardless of how cautious you think you're being. It's why modern web-browsers are basically their own VM inside your pc anymore, and it's why torrent clients shouldn't have access to anything besides the download/upload folders and whatever minimal set of network perms they need.
@BaumGeist @Quail4789 If you get software from an untrusted source, and it does not matter if it's a torrent, ftp, https, scp, etc, you run this risk. And usually when you download with a torrent the supplying site will publish a hash which you can compare to make sure that it wasn't corrupted in transit.
@Quail4789 @rc__buggy@sh.it just.works there is not a known exploit in sudo but there IS a known exploit in the library it uses to elevate privileges, at least in older versions. Also I make full system weekly backups so worst comes to worst I'm never going to lose more than a weeks data.
Then run it as your user. It's not best practice but you do you
edit: lol
@rc__buggy @Quail4789 And that is a very good point but the only thing I ever use transmission for is downloading distros. If my distro is already compromised then it's already all over, transmission aside.
It may be mostly "security theater" but it requires almost no extra effort and drastically increases the difficulty of compromise by adding privilege escalation as another requirement to gaining root access.
The point is also to minimize potential damages caused by a bug in the software. Just this year there have been multiple data-destroying bugs in publicly released software. If the app runs as a server it's usually trivial to have it run as a dedicated user, with just enough permissions to do its job.
It's just good practice, even though the risks might be low why risk it at all?
Not yet, but if every system was only protected against what already happened instead of also what could happen, we'd get hacked a lot more often!