this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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From what I hear, doas is more secure. I don't think it matters though, as long as you keep your system updated. I use sudo still.
It's really only more secure in the sense that in general more complicated programs have more things that can go wrong with them. Either bugs, or just user error.
That is a valid concern, and most people don't need or use any of sudo's extra features, so it's completely reasonable to switch to doas because of that, but it's not like there's some glaring security flaw in sudo that most people really need to worry about. Especially if they're not doing weird things in the config, which would mostly be the same people who could easily switch to doas anyway.
Thank you I think I will stick with sudo.
How is it more secure?
Afaik much smaller code base and as such easier to audit.
I think it's because sudo only requires a password the first time on each shell.
sudo maintains ‘sudo state’ for 15 minutes. After that you need to enter the password again.
15 minutes that's good to know thanks.
It is a configurable value so don't rely on it being 15 minutes everywhere.
TIL, thanks for this info
It's entirely configurable but I think by default sudo will "cache" your authentication for a period of time so multiple commands in the same session only need the password entered once. You can even configure sudo to not need a password for certain commands (although obviously you need to be careful you're not opening a hole in your security).
doas is likewise configurable; though the mechanism that keeps track of the timeout is different on OpenBSD (where doas originated) & Linux ---- and there used to be some reservations about the latter implementation.