My family recently got me a new computer setup that won't require sudo and other practices considered harmful. It even does shapes, colors, and animal sounds, which is good enough for my use case.
"Not downloading malware" is everyone's default stance, but no one can identify all of it.
And that's only a single vector out of many. Security flaws exist in even the best operating systems that make you vulnerable even when doing everything "right" (which you emphatically are not).
As a more additive approach than just giving up and running everything as root, I think in Linux you could do the same with (a fair amount of effort and) SELinux or AppArmor.
This is exactly why Qubes OS was created: https://qubes-os.org. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.
Also, you're statistically much more likely to die from a car crash than a malware attack.
That's true now, but I honestly don't think it'll be the case in twenty years.
The point of lowering application permission is not to prevent you from doing things. It’s to prevent the application to do things you don’t want.
That’s why people try to give apps as little permission as possible and only grant them when they are required.
Technically you are one vulnerability away from irremediably losing everything after opening a seemingly innocent file. I am actually convinced the sole reason it doesn’t happen is because it doesn’t make sense to target people doing that because they virtually don’t exist.
Point the finger at whoever you want. If you need to find who broke the bicycle for the mind, I think most of us know who's responsible.
I've been using a dedicated computer for banking / finance work for a few years now. I also run some software that I consider less trustworthy on my "daily driver" Windows PC as a dedicated user, separate from my "daily driver" account.
I really need to make the jump to Qubes. I've been meaning to for years. The learning curve for their contrivances seems steep and I'm lazy.
How many people on Windows create separate user accounts, run programs as those accounts (hello runas), & set ACLs?
for the vast majority of consumers and employees this is like using a bazooka to kill a mosquito. Unnecessary and dangerous. But for some EXPERTS (IT/Tech professionals) and hobbyists, it’s crucial to their workflow.
Having the _option_ is a must.
The same popup that asks for microphone access but now says the word root in its place, and a consumer is like “not sure what root is, maybe they meant toot!”
And then their whole machine is compromised.
I'm not too worried about security for normal users if we kept it that way. I just want not to have any extra roadblocks for the powerusers from the banks, Authy or McDonald's.
20 years ago if I started to list ip addresses to my ISP on the phone I got somebody technical immediately. This doesn’t work anymore, because people know more about this. This caused that for example I could only turn WiFi on or off on my ISP’s router and nothing else without a specific request to them, a manual restart to my router days later, and I need to use a terrible buggy software.
These kind of things unfortunately also restrict beginners, or people who without such barriers would start to tinker, and eventually learn to do these safely. Even I waited for weeks with the call, who have been configuring routers for 25 years.
I’m installing now a self hosted OwnTracks on docker. A lot of beginner started to do the same. They make rookie mistakes all the time. Let them make those mistakes.
I would have never learned what I know without the freedom of making mistakes.
Jesus Christ.