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If you assume that conventions don't work as people will just run whatever crap as root, I don't think you can solve the problem without taking away that right

• Silhouette 9y ago
  If you assume that conventions don't work as people will just run whatever crap as root... That's not really the issue, I think. Literally everything you install, however legitimate the source and however well-intentioned the people providing it, is "whatever crap" for the purposes of this exercise. What happened here could also have happened using just about anything else you installed on a typical Linux system today, whether from an official distro package repository, or some other source of packaged files, or side-loaded with one of those horrendous "Sure, I'll download your arbitrary script from the Internet and pipe it through sh as root to install your software without even checking it, as you recommend on your web site" things. There is no reason that our systems should trust arbitrary installation scripts to do arbitrary things, whether they're running as root or not, but especially if they are. I'm stunned at the opposition I'm seeing from so many people on HN to the idea of making a system more secure, even while we're discussing a demonstrated, system-destroying bug in widely used software that was apparently unintentionally rolled out through at least one official channel when it wasn't ready.