diff --git a/appvm/qubes.sudoers b/appvm/qubes.sudoers index 5841129..8087a90 100644 --- a/appvm/qubes.sudoers +++ b/appvm/qubes.sudoers @@ -1 +1,46 @@ user ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL + +# WTF?! Have you lost your mind?! +# +# In Qubes VMs there is no point in isolating the root account from +# the user account. This is because all the user data are already +# accessible from the user account, so there is no direct benefit for +# the attacker if she could escalate to root (there is even no benefit +# in trying to install some persistent rootkits, as the VM's root +# filesystem modifications are lost upon each start of a VM). +# +# One might argue that some hypothetical attacks against the +# hypervisor or the few daemons/backends in Dom0 (so VM escape +# attacks) most likely would require root access in the VM to trigger +# the attack. +# +# That's true, but mere existence of such a bug in the hypervisor or +# Dom0 that could be exploited by a malicious VM, no matter whether +# requiring user, root, or even kernel access in the VM, would be +# FATAL. In such situation (if there was such a bug in Xen) there +# really is no comforting that: "oh, but the mitigating factor was +# that the attacker needed root in VM!" We're not M$, and we're not +# gonna BS our users that there are mitigating factors in that case, +# and for sure, root/user isolation is not a mitigating factor. +# +# Because, really, if somebody could find and exploit a bug in the Xen +# hypervisor -- so far there have been only one (!) publicly disclosed +# exploitable bug in the Xen hypervisor from a VM, found in 2008, +# incidentally by one of the Qubes developers (RW) -- then it would be +# highly unlikely if that person couldn't also found a user-to-root +# escalation in VM (which as we know from history of UNIX/Linux +# happens all the time). +# +# At the same time allowing for easy user-to-root escalation in a VM +# is simply convenient for users, especially for update installation. +# +# Currently this still doesn't work as expected, because some idotic +# piece of software called PolKit uses own set of policies. We're +# planning to address this in Beta 2. (Why PolKit is an idiocy? Do a +# simple experiment: start 'xinput test' in one xterm, running as +# user, then open some app that uses PolKit and asks for root +# password, e.g. gpk-update-viewer -- observe how all the keystrokes +# with root password you enter into the "secure" PolKit dialog box can +# be seen by the xinput program...) +# +# joanna.