use sudo(8) or change permission?

[spiderpig]

Seeing this guide on relaxing/modifying permissions making USB devices accessible by normal users:

http://daemonforums.org/showthread.p...1579#post51579

I have the following question:

From a security standpoint, is this practice as secure at simply configuring sudo to access such devices? I've always accessed USB devices that way, & always thought that staying close to how the default installation is more prudent...

Opinions and discussion are appreciated!

Thanks!

[jggimi]

The use of sudo(8) is not necessarily better or worse. We can misconfigure /etc/sudoers just as easily as we can misconfigure nodes in /dev.

What matters is governance. What authorizations are being controlled? What powers are granted to the authorized user? And, not only do we authorize users.. we authorize applications -- sometimes, without realizing it.

For many years, I placed my administrative accounts in both wheel and operator groups. But I realized, with a little help from sthen@, that I was giving every application I executed the same access to these GIDs.

I no longer give my wheel users access to the operator group. Not directly. They can dump(8) filesystems only after changing userids, which they can do with sudo conveniently. The humans (me, mainly) are trusted. The software they run day-to-day ... not as much.