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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 26th, 2023

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  • Because the thing people refer to when they say “linux” is not actually an operating system. It is a family of operating systems built by different groups that are built mostly the same way from mostly the same components (which, themselves are built by separate groups).


  • Sudo is a setuid binary, which means it executes with root permissions as a child of of the calling process. This technically works, but gives the untrusted process a lot of ways to mess with sudo and potentially exploit it for unauthorized access.

    Run0 works by having a system service always running in the background as root. Running a command just sends a message to the already running seevice. This leaves a lot less room for exploits.



  • Java did have a Security Manager that can be used to prevent this sort of thing. The original thinking was that the Java runtime would essentially be an OS, and you could have different applets running within the runtime. This required a permission system where you could confine the permissions of parts of a Java program without confining the entire thing; which led to the Java security manager.

    Having said that, the Java Security Manager, while an interesting idea, has never been good. The only place it has ever seen significant use was in webapps, where it earned Java the reputation for being insecure. Nowadays, Java webapps are ancient history due to the success of Javascript.

    The security manager was depreciated in Java 17, and I believe removed entirely in Java 21.


  • I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

    Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

    There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.