by > > As far as i know there is No danger except someone else comes into the room
> > hits you with something
> > in de head makes you passout and takes over the terminal
> > >Hello,
> > >I've been told time and time again that it isn't good to be logged in as
> > >"root" for long periods. The implication is that there's a potential
> > >security breach, but no one comes out and says this.
> > >So now I'm curious. What is risky about being logged in as root? Is it
> > >simply the danger that someone might walk up to an unoccupied terminal?
> > >Or can something else happen?
> >[...]
> A *very* long time ago there seemed to be a risk with having a root
> login caused by ANSI display code implementations... there were (are?)
> sequences that allow to remap keys. So if you're logged on as root, and
> have your terminal open so somebody can use write(1) or alike to write
> online messages to you, your keyboard could be remapped in a way that
> the next time you hit enter, strange things might happen (remap enter to
> ";cd /;rm -rf * <enter>" would be one of the less friendly
> possibilities).
root for normal use, is that the consequences of simple typos can be
devastating. If, as root, you mistype "rm -rf / tmp/foo" for "rm -rf /tmp/foo",
you've just hosed yourself completely. As a normal user you'd just get an error
message.
Phil