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From guest you can't sudo or ssh. Why I can't sudo is simple. But why can't I su?

What is it that su provides that ssh to the user@localhost wont?

The reason for this question being my other question which has attracted a lot of criticisms.

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It has to be for security reasons, so a guest won't be able to somehow "hack" the system and gain administrator rights, making changes which will break the OS.

What if a "guest" knows some kind of security hole and somehow logs in without knowing the password of root or another privileged user and log in using su? Then he/she may even run a rm -rf --no-preserve-root / and ruin the whole system!

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  • I know that, but can you be specific? Jul 10, 2015 at 19:46
  • @daltonfury42 if a "guest" knows some kind of security hole and somehow logs in without knowing the password of root or another privileged user and log in using su? Then he/she may even run a rm -rf --no-preserve-root /...
    – aastefanov
    Jul 10, 2015 at 19:49
  • Yes, that's a possiblity. Privilege Escalation. Add that to your answer and I will accept it. Jul 10, 2015 at 19:53

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