[HN Gopher] Remove "This incident will be reported." from user w... ___________________________________________________________________ Remove "This incident will be reported." from user warnings Author : sohkamyung Score : 365 points Date : 2023-04-29 12:25 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | barnbuilder wrote: | Social media communities really ought to observe a "leave no | trace" rule with respect to GitHub and other such spaces. This | commit from February 2022 is now as of today littered with a | bunch of joke comments from being linked from here and previously | somewhere else earlier (based on timestamps). | calebegg wrote: | > Social media communities really ought to observe a [...] rule | | Oh honey.... | seydor wrote: | They could at least have the option to report it to Santa | juliangmp wrote: | This makes me weirdly sad | rbanffy wrote: | Same. I like the surreally enigmatic message. | DonHopkins wrote: | Why can't I report all those idiots posting the letter "F" in | github comments? ;) | chewbaxxa wrote: | They are just paying their respects. | Symbiote wrote: | What does F mean? | drexlspivey wrote: | It's a call of duty meme, at some point your character is | at a funeral and F is the action button and there is a | prompt on the casket "press F to pay respects" | cobbal wrote: | It's a low-effort addition to the dialogue, but it is a | legitimate communication of a viewpoint. Who gets to draw the | line of which comments should be nuked? (My view, the repo | owner should (and maybe already has that power)) | tedunangst wrote: | Why would somebody care about low effort dialog more than a | year after the commit? | klyrs wrote: | Request a "F" emoji reaction instead. | [deleted] | pimlottc wrote: | For those who may not be aware: | | https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/press-f-to-pay-respects | jon-wood wrote: | Strong agree on that. One person doing so was possibly amusing, | everyone else jumping on the wagon is just irritating noise, | and I'm not even responsible for trying to sift through that | for legitimate feedback. | shadowgovt wrote: | The point of the joke is that it's a bandwagon joke. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | LGTM. The incident might not be reported, so that message may not | be accurate. | seanhunter wrote: | Thank goodness. That was a terrible message. I remember my very | first experience with unix was setting up Red Hat 3.0.3[1] at | work for a small internet company in like 1997 and getting that | message and just not knowing what on earth to do. There was noone | in my company who could help me and all I had was a unix book | from my local library which didn't even cover linux (but I sort | of thought it would be helpful). | | [1] With the legendary 1.2.13 kernel | johnisgood wrote: | "This incident will be logged" may have been better. | rbanffy wrote: | "Your transgression has been noted and punishment may be | dispensed accordingly". | lamontcg wrote: | "A disapproving God has noted your infraction, and Santa | Claus has added an entry on the naughty list for you" | rbanffy wrote: | "There will be consequences" | abnry wrote: | Funny story. When I was in grad school, the math department | office I was in had Linux computers administrated by the | department. One day I was goofing in my shared office with a | fellow grad student by playing with what resources were | available. | | We were trying sudo and failed with enough silly passwords that | we got the "this incident will be reported" message. I | confidently told my officemate that these messages were never | saved and recorded. | | A few moments later, from our open office door (which I assume | meant all our conversation was able to be overheard), our IT lady | from down the hall came in and said to me "Download the internet, | really?" | | Because yes, I did type, while not saying I was doing so, "sudo | DOWNLOAD THE INTERNET" into the terminal while goofing. | | Funny story but I did feel a bit embarrassed at the time. | nailer wrote: | To be fair in 2023, a lot of people are building LLMs and | starting with downloading the internet. | deusum wrote: | Save a lot of time and space by doing an rm -rf first | adolph wrote: | sudo !! | stilley2 wrote: | I once entered 'sudo echo hi" or something similar on a large | HPCC and received an email back from a sysadmin that just said | "hello". | 1lint wrote: | That's an amusing anecdote, though I find it bothersome the | sysadmin failed to correctly implement the echo command | ww520 wrote: | There's the talk command on Unix. We used to do a 'who' to | find out who're on the system and 'talk' to them. | tryauuum wrote: | also wall(1) | andrewSC wrote: | Also w(1) | ww520 wrote: | Speaking of interaction with the admin. Back in the days when I | was in school, the computer lab ran a Honeywell mainframe with | terminals. I wrote a program emulating the logon screen to | intercept the username and password of the unsuspecting | students logging on and to email them to me. I was going to | post the list of all the usernames and passwords at the end of | the semester on the wall. I dubbed it the Fishing project with | my friends (yes, that's before all the phishing activities went | rampant). | | I collected dozens of usernames and passwords before the | professor of my CS class stopped me one day after class and | said, you better stop whatever you're doing. Apparently the | system saved the typing of all sessions and the admin actually | went through all of them. | | The next semester all the terminals had a physical switch | installed that had to be pressed to reset the terminal before | logon. That killed any running program. I was glad to play a | small part in improving the security of my school lab. | doctor_eval wrote: | That's quite similar to my story. While at high school, I | wrote an innocent program to open the terminals at the nearby | college for chat sessions - nothing nefarious. The sysadm saw | what I did and realised I could use it to phish passwords. | Next time I went to use the computer lab, the terminals were | locked down. | | Showing my age but this would have been 1984 or so... a | remarkably early contribution to security? | elashri wrote: | I remember the first time to have this message was at my first | time using CERN lxplus during my undergrad. I was worried that | people will think I am stupid to try "sudo apt-get" there. It was | a mistake as I had several terminal sessions and forgot which one | was the local. | | Anyway fast forward today. I know the answer to the question to | whom usually this notification gets sent. They forward it via | SMTP server to the person on computing shift (at least for some | of the experiments) based on the experiment this person (who | tried sudo) account belongs too. probably also some IT email. | | Anyway it is stressful for new and young people. but honestly I | never read them. I have email rule to put them inside specific | folder I don't usually open. | bee_rider wrote: | The first time I saw this message I was on my own danged system | and I was still momentarily alarmed, hahaha. Common sense | asserted itself pretty quickly of course. | justinator wrote: | So no one checks these reports? | | No wonder we've had so many high profile breaches. | | Maybe this is what all those layoffs are about. | steeleyespan wrote: | A+ joke. | DocTomoe wrote: | Only low-key, though. A sysadmin not monitoring authlog / | admin-mail is a huge security smell. | | The fact that our infrastructure STINKS of this is one of the | major indications we do not take security seriously. | bee_rider wrote: | Fortunately we solved this; we don't have any system admin | to not watch these logs. | moogly wrote: | My favorite message I got in Ubuntu in 2008 (I still have a | screenshot of it): | | > Could not grab your mouse. | | > A malicious client may be eavesdropping on your session or you | may have just clicked a menu or some application just decided to | get focus. | | > Try again. | | > [Close] | IshKebab wrote: | I suspect a lot of readers here will not understand what's | hilarious about this. | kmeisthax wrote: | I remember getting something similar-sounding on modern Ubuntu | a few weeks ago. | bvinc wrote: | This sounds like an xwindows thing. The way popup menu windows | work in x, is the program grabs all keyboard and mouse events. | raverbashing wrote: | Yeah I think nobody checked any reports since a good 25 years | now. | ec109685 wrote: | One of the most privileged processes on the system and no unit or | functional tests need to be updated with this change. Sigh. | enw wrote: | This always surprises me. | | How come there are seemingly zero tests for what's essentially | critical infrastructure? | | How do you make sure things keep working? How do you prevent | regressions as team members change and tribal knowledge and | intuition is lost? How do you ensure all future humans working | on the project can make meaningful changes with confidence? | nixcraft wrote: | Boy, I made so many memes around sudo. I can't believe they | removed it. I mean, sudo does log messages in /var/log/secure or | /var/log/auth.log on Linux when something fails or is executed | successfully, depending on security policies. The default on most | distro is to log messages. | shadowgovt wrote: | Can't be done. That program is in the fossil record; change the | error message and you're going to break a thousand unknown | workflows that are relying on detecting that string (because | string detection is the only solution they have to get nuanced | information on the nature of the error). | | ETA: Oh wait it was actually committed? Color me surprised. | chaxor wrote: | Yeah I _relied_ on that over heating to occur when pressing | Ctrl for too long :D | | (Hopefully someone understands the reference) | encodedrose wrote: | https://xkcd.com/1172/ !! | remram wrote: | (February 2022) | klyrs wrote: | I've always been amused by this, because I usually get it on | single user systems (mine own) without mail. It makes me picture | some shady office in a bunker in central Nevada, where | undeliverable incident reports end up in dusty filing cabinets, | indexed by incorrect passwords. | jamal-kumar wrote: | For those wondering where the reports go, under systemd-based | linux distributions ideally you can get them with this: | sudo journalctl /bin/sudo | | Historically speaking however the sysadmin with access to the | 'mail' command would be able to run that and see mail delivered | to root@localhost for these reports. I think at least OpenBSD | still does things this way [1], but they moved away from sudo | YEARS ago now [2] | | [1] https://man.openbsd.org/security.8 | | [2] https://man.openbsd.org/doas | evilspammer wrote: | I haven't used journalctl in a while - do you mind explaining | how it works with a binary path? Does it report all system | logging that came from that executable, as if it were a service | file? | teddyh wrote: | The systemd journal logs not only raw strings and priorities | (like legacy syslog), but a large number of metadata fields | for each message. One of these fields is the name of the | executable which generated the message. The command | journalctl /bin/su | | can, to avoid ambiguity, also be written as | journalctl _EXE=/bin/su | | See systemd.journal-fields(7) for more information: https://m | anpages.debian.org/stable/systemd/systemd.journal-f... | dingledork69 wrote: | Or you set up your system so mail for root gets redirected to | an smtp server with an actual inbox read by actual people | jamal-kumar wrote: | Yeah, I kind of lament them removing this warning if I'm | going to be honest. It feels like something such as that | should be more common best practice. | | Of course decent log collection/monitoring should also be | able to catch authlog stuff and alert accordingly and I'm | sure most organizations rely on solutions like that instead | of letting things get lost in email | stefncb wrote: | It's only removed if sudo doesn't send mail. It still warns | if it's relevant. | can16358p wrote: | Isn't it leaking detail about internal policy about | whether incorrect sudoing is getting reported or not | though? | freedomben wrote: | Is there more to the change than the linked commit? | Because if not, looking at the code change I don't see | how you could possibly be correct. There is no additional | logic/branching that could be checking whether sudo sends | mail or not, just a string change. | TaylorAlexander wrote: | It was added back in a later commit but only prints if | the mail is configured. | freedomben wrote: | Nice, thanks that's very useful info | bo0tzz wrote: | This is correct, and was added back a few weeks later in | https://github.com/sudo- | project/sudo/commit/9757d29a24ac1872... | electroly wrote: | This is a pretty short diff and it clearly does NOT do | that, unless you're saying they went back later in | another commit to add this. They removed the message in | all situations. The string "This incident will be | reported" has been removed from the source code; it could | not possibly print that message now. | simse wrote: | The warning is added back here: https://github.com/sudo- | project/sudo/commit/9757d29a24ac1872... | fafqg wrote: | This doesn't seem to be correct. | asveikau wrote: | I feel like that warning comes right out of the era of | multi-user machines with unprivileged shell accounts. That | era is largely gone. Today, someone, possibly a less | knowledgeable user, runs sudo on their single user laptop | that they completely own outright, and may get confused who | they're being "reported" to. | jamal-kumar wrote: | Funny if you live in a free country | | Potentially terrifying if you don't | wkat4242 wrote: | To themselves of course. That's pretty clear. | | But there is a renewed focus on corporate laptops to | remove admin rights on windows. Not really because the | user is not being trusted, but because malware has a lot | more options for bypassing EDR/antimalware and | persistence when it runs with admin rights. | | I'm sure this will come to Linux too at some point. | ctoth wrote: | Completely this, I was so confused by OP because naturally | this is how my playbooks configure my systems. | jamal-kumar wrote: | I think this is mostly relevant to how confused and | sometimes downright mortified it makes new users of sudo | when they encounter it | | In other words, don't think well-configured ansible | playbooks are most people's first exposure to linux | although it does sound like you're doing things right which | is nice to hear | jimmaswell wrote: | I was surprised to start getting emails about my cron tasks | once I set up my mail server. It's neat. | prmoustache wrote: | I've always felt it was a very bad practice not to do it. | | In a lot of companies but one they avoided it for fear of | receiving emails. On that only company that did it, we made | sure that mailbox was clean by actually having a look when | cron scripts were crapping out or when users failed sudo | repeatedly and contacted the users. It was a much better | housekeeping than log on a box and see there are hundreds | of unread emails but dismissing it like most do. | evilspammer wrote: | I think it's a fear of _sending_ emails. You could | accidentally trigger a cronjob that sends a bunch of | emails and gets you put on spam filters. Error reporting | for cron is, of course, important; but the builtin email | reporting is best used for the local machine/network. A | more flexible and robust solution calls out to an API | that handles transactional emails/push notifications with | debouncing, escalation policies, etc. | trollingagain wrote: | The infringement has been backtraced and you will be reported to | the cyberpolice | wolfd wrote: | When I was in uni, the computer science school actually did | occasionally check these reports. Specifically, a guy named Chris | checked them. Some friends of mine apparently used this to send | him messages. | | `sudo hi chris` | gvurrdon wrote: | Similarly, at a place I used to work, messages such as "sudo | echo 'Hey John, please would you chmod -R a+r on | /storage/data/filename.txt, thanks!'" were used. This usually | resulted in irate "Stop that! You have to submit a ticket!" | emails. | nickdothutton wrote: | This would make a great (inaccurate) clickbait story about how | millenials (or insert group) found the message too | confronting/authoritarian. | its-summertime wrote: | Stressful message to see back when I was a clueless child. I'm | glad its getting removed. | bqmjjx0kac wrote: | I had a similar reaction to Windows 95's "An illegal operation | has occurred." I remember wondering whether the police were on | their way. | nullc wrote: | A friend of mine ran a multi-line BBS out of his home when he | lived with his parents. | | One day he came home and his parents sat him down to discuss | the "illegal activities" he was up to with the computers. He | was sweating bullets about the secret warez section of the | BBS until eventually he figured out that it was due to an | illegal operation crash message! | | (In that case it was probably desqview rather than windows) | sergiomattei wrote: | My brother pulled this prank on me when I was first learning | batch file. | | I thought I was going to jail. | glhaynes wrote: | I got my first computer when I was about 6. It would boot to | BASIC if there wasn't a floppy disk inserted. I typed | something random and got back "SYNTAX ERROR". I wasn't old | enough to know what either sin or taxes were, but my | impression was they were both real bad. | [deleted] | jon-wood wrote: | Way back when my Dad worked from home, and had what I think | was a Macintosh Classic II provided by his employer. I'd | occasionally be allowed to play the games on it, mostly the | pair matching one, which on one occasion crashed. Back then | the crash dialog featured an icon of a bomb with the fuse | lit, which caused me to panic thinking I'd caused the | computer to blow up. Thankfully I hadn't, and I believe that | computer is still in his attic somewhere. | Kye wrote: | I have genuinely had to reassure panicked relatives over | this. | shpx wrote: | Next step is to remove users/groups/sudo from Linux/UNIX | entirely. I'm one person using the computer, running software I | trust. I don't need it. | mnd999 wrote: | I suspect if you look in your passwd file you'll find lots of | users. Does nginx really need to read the files in your home | directory? | bmacho wrote: | Why, yes. Imagine you are in flow, and you want to show a | file to nginx, but you can't. Better give root (and user) | rights to nginx when you set up your system. | scraptor wrote: | Very few computers running nginx have human user accounts | with more than dotfiles in the home directory. Meanwhile | desktops run everything on the same account because defining | usable security policies between users is basically | impossible. | sph wrote: | Just login as root. Not that I'd recommend it. | radiator wrote: | So ...puppy Linux? | lxe wrote: | The "this incident will be reported" message always struck me as | having the same vibe as the "provided by the management for your | protection" labels they have on toilet seat covers. | Buttons840 wrote: | Can someone share even _one_ story where sudo reporting these | "incidents" was helpful? | | This feature seems to come from a world where elite hackers | simply repeat the same sudo command over and over hoping it will | eventually work. | gtirloni wrote: | _> Can someone share even one story where sudo reporting these | "incidents" was helpful?_ | | No, not a single one. | rbanffy wrote: | "And, if we did, we'd have to kill you." | hoodmane wrote: | Yes. More or less the first time I used Linux was on a fedora | workstation at my desk at MIT. The very nice sysadmin down the | hall sent me an email just a bit later saying "We see you were | trying to install x program. We installed it for you." I | understand that this is a very rare experience but the first | time I saw that message, a helpful person _was_ actually | looking at these reports. | hutzlibu wrote: | Does this kind of sysadmin still exists? (or do they even | still have the freedom to be so kind?) | | I cannot really imagine that happening today, at least not in | "professional" context. | stcg wrote: | It still happens, a fellow student and friend of mine got | this response ('installed it for you') about two years ago | at Radboud University Nijmegen after entering `sudo apt | install nasm` | vulcan01 wrote: | I have a small server that some of my friends have accounts on. | When they accidentally (or not!) try to use sudo (often this | happens with a "curl | sh" thing) I like to be informed. | throwaway892238 wrote: | There's no need to update the copyright year, but I do like it as | a canary to tell somebody the file has been updated lately. | hardlianotion wrote: | Aw - can't we just make it configurable? | pram wrote: | I was always disappointed it never summoned some grumpy graybeard | unix admin from a dark server room basement to give me a chiding | lecture. | tomatodevice wrote: | I receive mails from sudo incidents generated by my users, I | check the boxes except the gray beard. | bee_rider wrote: | I shave, I try to keep my demeanor as gray as possible. | bonzini wrote: | What about the red dress and flying reindeer? | duxup wrote: | I would have taken the opportunity to ask them a few questions. | | But that's probably why they don't come out to lecture. | john_shafthair wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20180426220342if_/http://assets.... | themodelplumber wrote: | I got a chiding lecture like that from some skinny UUG-type | security admins, by manually shutting down my HP-UX workstation | in a university CS lab. I had reached behind it and flipped the | power switch. | | I tried to flip it back on just afterward, to resume my | business (lol) but found that my login was blocked with a | message...come up to security in room 300-something and talk to | us to get your account un-suspended. | | The issue leading to the frantic shutdown goes as follows: | | I had been browsing some of JWZ's online journals in | Netscape...the old about:jwz trick. | | Within those pages, there's a linked audio clip of the fake | *rgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally". | | I clicked on the link not realizing what would happen, and of | course this passionate audio clip played at more or less full | volume to a computer lab full of university students from | China. | | (They were extremely "I didn't notice that" about the whole | thing, but I was beet red and frantically scanning the room for | anyone who I could possibly nervously laugh with...) | | Back then Netscape didn't show any audio controls that I could | find anywhere when clips like that played, which was also a | really frustrating part of this. I guess it just handed off the | audio to some process which I could have found via `top` if I | had the time. | | There was also an internal speaker, nothing with a manual | volume control. Great! | | Anyway, I went upstairs, got my lecture about other people who | could have had sessions terminated while working on the same | workstation, got the login back, and fortunately none of the | Chinese students seemed to have let my er..._BYU_ CS security | admins...know about the situation in the lab. lol. | | (No longer a practicing Mormon; still think CDE is cool) | | Edit: Just for the memories...at the same time, I had a PT job | doing university IT support on a Novell network, and we | supported, among other places (the MTC, the laundry, Creamery-- | PHEW those amazing chocolate malt shakes--but not so phew the | time the creamery's huge 1K+ gal. milk vats leaked and there | was a foot of standing milk in our PCs there, etc.), the | married student housing computer labs. | | Colloquially labeled by my boss and others as the "rabbit | hutches"... | | This was still pretty early days for the web, and I remember | periodically getting frantic voicemails from newly-married | folks. | | A common version of the voice message would be something like, | "Hi, uh...I was in the married student housing lab...trying to | book airline tickets for my husband to fly home and see his | mom...anyway (tearful quivering voice starts)...russian porn | came up I guess? I mean I am just guessing...uh, so | anyway...(crying harder, phew)...the lab assistant gave me your | number, and here's my number, if we need to talk about this or | anything, call me I guess?" | | I can't imagine what those students must have felt when the lab | assistant just shrugged their shoulders regarding "what to do | about this" and gave them somebody's office number to call. Up | the chain with you! | | Gestapo-level perceptions would always tend to kick in at that | point...and you had to maintain an ecclesiastical endorsement | to continue studies there, so this was a pretty big deal. | Anything involving porn was always at the potentially- | terminate-your-entire-university-experience level. | | (Often the calls to those labs were pretty funny though. Like a | toddler put a dorito inside of a CD-ROM drive, bring your | hemostat, things like that. Afterward we'd get a Jamba Juice, | or get a free cafeteria meal from a really nice food-services | manager, chat about Everquest, etc.) | astrange wrote: | > the married student housing computer labs. | | This is a good garden-path sentence. | themadturk wrote: | They have a pretty amazing creamery at Washington State | University as well... have a milkshake after lunch, you won't | need dinner. Go Cougs! | zubairshaik wrote: | What does UUG stand for? That's the only acronym that ChatGPT | didn't give me a guess for from your comment. | | The other guesses were: CDE - Common Desktop Environment, MTC | - Missionary Training Center. | | GPT is much better than web search for this, I'll say that. | It's ability to use context is invaluable. | themodelplumber wrote: | https://www.facebook.com/groups/byu.uug/ | | This user group was already in place by the time Linux came | along, so you had the UUG doing Red Hat boxed set giveaways | and such. There was a ton of excitement about Linux and not | as much about Unix at that point. Then a bit more proper- | Unix excitement when OS X came out. | | The other ones are correct. | asdfman123 wrote: | Just because we've never seen him doesn't mean he hasn't at | some point quietly summoned a curse on us | sph wrote: | Or silently reduced your quota by 20% | jaggederest wrote: | let me just run the tape eraser over the backups for that | user... | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Was his name Simon? | esafak wrote: | For the uninitiated: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell | hprotagonist wrote: | > CLICKETY < | LegitShady wrote: | "man the internet has been really slow lately" | | graybeard chuckles in the server room | blueflow wrote: | At @dayjob, we have a mailing list for root@ mails. We actively | use it for recording the output of cronjobs and like that. | Several times a year i get sudo fail mails from random people on | the terminal servers. A few years ago i actually compiled a list | of the most prolific repeat offenders and they got a bag of | marshmallows that have the form of coal nuggets right before | Christmas vacation. | ibic wrote: | As it happens - "The warning was restored in a slightly altered | form in 9757d29" ( https://github.com/sudo- | project/sudo/commit/9757d29a24ac1872... ) - Millert. | dan_linder wrote: | This is great! Now when I break into a system I can quickly | verify if they've got this aspect of sudo logging setup or not! | | Only 1/2 /s | usr1106 wrote: | That makes senses. I already wanted to comment that showing an | false warning is not good. But silently sending a mail of what | you tried to do is worse. | brundolf wrote: | Obligatory xkcd (one of my favorites): https://xkcd.com/838/ | kitsunesoba wrote: | Reminds me of using Win9x when programs crashed (as often | happened then), prompting Windows to present those "This program | has performed an illegal operation" dialogs. | | As a kid the only bit of that message that made any sense was | "illegal operation" which made me wonder if I'd broken some law | somehow. | phendrenad2 wrote: | This is why I don't put easter eggs or obscure programmer-lingo | into programs anymore. Every error is potentially user-facing. | [deleted] | EvanAnderson wrote: | The first computer at my home was a machine my father bought | for bookkeeping for his business. I had a loose understanding | of what that meant (around 8-9 y/o). I knew paying taxes was | something he did. | | I remember looking thru the BASIC manual and seeing | "ILLEGAL..." error messages. I assumed it meant that doing | whatever this was somehow violated tax laws. Made sense to me | since the computer was used for bookkeeping. | Ruq wrote: | Just change it to "This incident has been logged to /PATH." and | that should be fine, right? Or, if you're really concerned about | not exposing system log paths just mention it's been logged. | Mordisquitos wrote: | sohkamyung is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be | reported. | f1shy wrote: | Sogtulakk? | fafqg wrote: | acm1pt | ajsnigrutin wrote: | So... how will santa know who's been a bad boy/girl now? | forgotusername6 wrote: | So according to the comments it isn't actually gone, just the | wording updated and now dependent on if you have actually set up | the mailer to report it somewhere https://github.com/sudo- | project/sudo/commit/9757d29a24ac1872... | john_shafthair wrote: | That seems pretty stupid. | | While they're at it, why not update the SSH warning banner with | a list of what we do and don't log on this system. As a | courtesy to their adversary. | | This sudo message has been the same since the dawn of time. | There is literally no reason to correct it. This is the one | place you don't want to be pedantic, leaking security | configuration via stderr. | kragen wrote: | something like 99% of computers with sudo installed are | single-user machines where the only effect of the warning is | to scare people | | and it's only been the same since people started to switch to | sudo in the late 90s; su never printed such a warning | alexb_ wrote: | >the only effect of the warning is to scare people | | Good. If you're not familiar with what sudo does, then you | shouldn't be using it in the first place. | teaearlgraycold wrote: | If it's your own computer you should be able to break it | until you learn how not to. | twelve40 wrote: | i'd argue in a different direction: if sudo barks a scary | unknown message at me, i'd avoid using it altogether and | just use su, which is the opposite of what people should | be nudged to do. | pxeger1 wrote: | It's an abstraction. You shouldn't need to be familiar | with every aspect of what it does. | kibwen wrote: | If you shouldn't be using sudo, then you shouldn't be | listed as a sudoer on that system. If you're listed as a | sudoer, then you should become familiar with what sudo | does. | TaylorAlexander wrote: | Reminds me of when I was younger and my mom and my brother | were using a windows computer. They got the message "an | illegal error has occurred" and my mom called me to ask if | they had broken the law. | mr_mitm wrote: | When I was young I had messed with the computer and it | showed an english message with the word "atom" in it. My | mom not being a native speaker freaked out as if a | nuclear explosion was about to take place. | john_shafthair wrote: | 1. All Unix systems are multi-user. Hence sudo. | | 2. Who are these scared people? Do they think the Unix | police are going to kick in their door? A guy with gray ear | hair and suspenders that will be out of breath from walking | up their front steps? | | 3. I'm referring to tailoring an error message based on | security configuration. That's the dumb bit. | Arch485 wrote: | I don't really think this is a security issue. If an | attacker is able to try executing sudo on your system, | you have much bigger problems (for example, data exfil | can be done by non-sudo users in many cases, or if your | system is sufficiently old there's known priviledge | escalation exploits). I don't think an attacker gains | much knowledge from knowing whether or not they're on the | naughty list. | IshKebab wrote: | If the attacker can execute sudo they can probably just | alias it to a sudo that sends them the password and wait. | The number of users on multiuser systems who _don 't_ | have sudo access is just vanishingly small. Universities | perhaps. But in most companies, if they trust you with | access to the machine in the first place they'll trust | you with sudo access. | aflag wrote: | That message is poor UI. If you know what it means, you | probably don't care about the possibility of sudo sending an | email when you first typed it. If you don't know, you will be | worried probably without a good reason to be so. | | Nowadays it's even worse than it once was, because now the | natural instinct of people is to think that the incident was | reported to canonical or ibm. The opposite of how they are | supposed to feel about when using free software. | | I'd change it to "This attempted was logged" or something | like that when that is true. Just so the user is aware that | the data they are typing there may be seen by someone else. | But by default, in their own systems, that message should | never appear, unless they specifically configured it that | way. | [deleted] | microtherion wrote: | Maybe update pnews.sh as well to recalibrate the estimate of | "hundreds, if not thousands of dollars" per usenet message. | discreditable wrote: | Warning banners are not uncommon. https://www.stigviewer.com/ | stig/red_hat_enterprise_linux_8/2... | matsemann wrote: | But I use the output from sudo in my program, changing this | message breaks my scripts. /s | lucb1e wrote: | Here, you dropped this: https://xkcd.com/1172/ | gopalv wrote: | https://xkcd.com/838/ | | Well, if you have an incident list and nobody's checking it twice | ... | oconnor663 wrote: | That XKCD is actually mentioned directly in the commit message | :) | CrampusDestrus wrote: | Anyone knows why it's even considered an "incident" at all? you | might have misstyped a username or something, why would it | require a report? | [deleted] | estebarb wrote: | I teach an entry level CS course at the University and my | students got scared a lot when they saw that message. It was | funny until I noted that they were really worried :( . | diebeforei485 wrote: | Yes, it's important that things be clear. Hopefully we do | something about man pages next, they are way too obfuscated. | rbanffy wrote: | Not to say sexist. | | /me ducks | babuloseo wrote: | No lets keep this :) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-29 23:00 UTC)