this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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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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Either you're trolling - in which case, sod off back to Reddit - or you have a woeful misunderstanding of how Linux user permissions work.
Please explain how someone might "simply change" someone else's .bashrc without either already having access to that user account, or root access on the whole machine?
The idea is malware you installed would presumably run under your user account and have access. You could explicitly give it different UIDs or even containerize it to counteract that, but by default a process can access everything it's UID can, which isn't great. And even still to this day that's how users execute a lot of processes.
Windows isn't much better here, though.
Regarding Windows all I read is that this "admin permission dialog" is launched in some form of sandbox where no software can access it. Not sure about faking input devices though, and I am also not promoting Windows for Security
True, but that doesn't necessarily matter if I can compromise the privileged app instead. I could replace it, modify it on disk, or really any number of things in order to get myself a hook into a privileged position.
Just injecting code in some function call which launches
malware.exewould do the trick. Ofc signature checks and the like can help here - but those aren't a given. There's any number of ways you can elevate yourself on a system based off of user security if your threat model is malicious processes. Linux (and windows) will stop users from accessing each other's crap by default, but not processes.Or: supply chain attacks. Now your official app without any modifications is malicious.