Is it true Linux ,Unix and Mac computers default root account is locked .?

Question

Quote Running as root is dangerous, that's why it is not there by default.Some distros decide to lock the root account so that people will not log-in to the root account for day to day activity. Ubuntu is one of these distros.

Ubuntu chooses to lock the root account as a part of how security is handled, but this is certainly NOT true of all Linux distros.

Fedora uses su and one sets a root password when installing.

Debian gives you the option of su or sudo when you install (or at least it did last time I installed it).

Slax, a live CD, and others, the system runs as root


There is nothing hard about using sudo, it just takes a few keystrokes to put your password in every now and then. You will get used to it after a few days.Quote

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Sorry what is point of this ? Why not make other account with little to no privileges like windows?

Answer 1

It *does* make an other account with little-to-no privileges. That's the point.



Think of email attachments. You double-click on an email attachment, and it contains malicious code. What's the worst it could do?



If it has root permissions, it could install an arbitrary virus into your system. If it only has user permissions, then it could still do some bad stuff -- like, say, encrypting all of your documents and then demanding some money sent to an overseas account to "get it back" -- but it could not fundamentally change the rest of the system. Its malice is limited to /home/drostie/, and cannot spread to system-critical directories like /bin/ -- or even to other accounts like /home/girlfriend/.



In the olden days, everybody ran Windows XP with Administrator privileges, which made it very easy for viruses to take over your system. I don't know how much has happened with Windows since then, because I made the switch to Ubuntu at the close of that era, rather than learning to use the crap that was Vista. But it was a serious problem that led to a proliferation of rootkits and so on.



And it doesn't have to be that way. When you are checking emails and browsing the web and reading PDFs, you don't need to install software. You don't need those root permissions. When you finally want to say "okay, there's a new program that I want to install," okay, you can use the superuser account to install such things seamlessly.



The program sudo is actually pretty nice here. It lets you specify in a separate file some commands that you want to succeed automatically without password. So, for example, I have a shell script installed in /usr/local/bin which restarts some services; it is listed in my "sudoers file", so that I can just type "sudo do_stuff" and it runs as root without a password.

Answer 2

By default the user accounts DON'T have many privileges, except in their home directories so malware can write anything it wants -- except it can't execute any system-wide changes. Fedora and Debian, like Slackware which I use (and by the way, these are modern versions of the oldest three currently maintained distros though Fedora was called Red Hat till 2003) DO have root accounts which are easily accessible. Fedora -- and presumably Debian, I haven't used it in a while -- will only let you log in with X-Windows and X windows won't let you use root, but if you log in on a text screen you can log in as root, or you can open a terminal and run su which lets you run as root. Still and all the default IS the user account with limited privileges. M$ COPIED this from *nix and in a kludgy way which allows for a LOT of security holes.



SU and SUDO are BSD programs. Mac OS X is a BSD and the Linux-kernel was a free kernel to run BSD programs and others. In essence the current permission structure was written in the late eighties after the first viruses appeared, and is still very useful. This particular quotation is VERY Ubuntu-centric. And almost right, but simplistic in the way Ubuntu-centric explanations often are, even for subjects where Ubuntu is really sensible like this one. You can, for example, log in as a user on Slax. Just log in from the text screen and you will get instructions.



UNIX and Linux are actually modular operating systems, which means everything is incredibly customizable. Many distributions of both do NOT by default lock root, but many system administrators can and do lock the accounts on their own. The tools are straightforward (if not easy). Think of them as OSes for do it yourselfers. They are in origin, even if they are more accessible to others now. That is the point, and as for your final question about being like Windows? Windows has now copied them -- badly and inchoately.

Answer 3

Some Linux distros will disable root account login by default, others don't; it depends which one. MAC OSX is built upon Darwin which is a type of BSD I believe, which does disable root but can be re-enabled if required.



root is a dangerous account to have active, a properly configured 'nix is pretty much user compartmentalized meaning generally, a compromised account would not spread to the system or other accounts (something that is NOT true with Windows). However, should a root account be compromised, the whole system and all user accounts would be in danger.

Answer 4

Predominantly because you are missing the point, root has to be there to install the system, the lock down will occur after the installation. Linux/Unix accounts can be created with various different security levels and access privileges. Windows itself uses a highly suspect account system which has been compromised numerous times.