Bug 354106

Summary: Use PolicyKit instead of kdesu to gain required privileges
Product: [Applications] KSystemLog Reporter: Elias Probst <mail>
Component: generalAssignee: Nicolas Ternisien <nicolas.ternisien>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE    
Severity: wishlist CC: richard.epost
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Elias Probst 2015-10-19 21:00:35 UTC
ksystemlog should use PolicyKit instead of kdesu to gain required privileges:

Disadvantages of kdesu:
- a full application running as root on a users X11 server with unlimited permissions is a huge attack surface for all kind of exploits, vulnerabilities etc.
- application is started as root, which makes the application use a different style/iconset etc than the current user's profile. This is visually unpleasant
- increased memory usage, as all components for a second user session (DBus, KDE services, …) needs to be loaded

Advantages of PolicyKit:
- the application runs as the regular user without any visual disruptions
- only those privileges required are given which immensively lowers the negative security impact
- more transparency for the user which privileges the application has through the PolKit agent's interface
- the context of the current user is provided, which would make it possible to also inspect the current user's session journal
Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2015-10-19 22:35:00 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 227793 ***
Comment 2 Christoph Feck 2020-08-03 18:37:40 UTC
*** Bug 424382 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***