[GRLUG] Distro's - was GRLUG test comment

[Ron Lauzon]

Tim Schmidt wrote:
> Agree.  100%.  On a system with a root password, any user may use 'su'
> in an attempt to brute-force the root account.  That's bad.  Ubuntu
> ships with a completely disabled root account.  No amount of
> brute-forcing with get you root access.
>   
Not true, since you can brute force the first user's password too.
> Further, if multiple users need to escalate their privilages for any
> reason, it's common practice (on desktops at least) to hand out the
> root password, because it's easy.
Yup.  Security is never easy.  But that's beside the point because this 
is a security procedure issue, not an Ubuntu issue.

> That said, you can simply add your mother to the sudoers file with
> rights to run synaptic and nothing else.
>   
In which case, you have a "privileged" user account and a "regular" user 
account and no root user account.

So what's the difference between that and having a regular user account 
and root?

-- 
Ron Lauzon - rlauzon at acm dot org
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