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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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Give browser and wine ownership to user "nobody" = "foolproof" against viruses? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Title. Just had this baseless yet possible idea on my head and I'd like to know how wrong it is? Since afaik, "nobody" has absolutely zero permissions... other than the ones given by the user. Pretty sure I'm missing something vital or important, but... I'm completely fine being called dumb every now and then.

Thanks in advance.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

A process owned by any user will be able to exploit a userspace vulnerability, whatever this user is. Selinux, chroot, cgroups/containerization add a layer of protection to this, but any vulnerability that bypass these will be as exploitable from nobody as from any other local user. It will protect a user files from some access attempts but will fail to prevent any serious attack. And as usual when it comes to security, a false sense of security is worse than no security at all.

Remember that some exploits exist that can climb outside of a full-blown virtual machine to the virtualisation host, finding a user escalation vulnerability is even more likely.

The only real protection is an up-to-date system, sane user behavior and maybe a little bit of paranoia.