Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

3
  • 3
    There are enough privilege escalation problems with linux. So yes - malware is possible. Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 20:55
  • @Nils - Correct me if I'm wrong but privilege escalation comes from software that was installed by the user and given access to the system. I'm talking about drive by attacks where, say, you visit a web page that downloads/installs/executes without user intervention. Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 21:31
  • The software installed might be a png-picture that gets downloaded by the browser provided by the operating system. Now a flaw in the png-library will execute code just because you look at that picture (user-context). That code will use another glibc-fault in combination with a OS-provided suid-root-script to elevate the rights further to the root-account. So yes - it is possible. Commented Oct 9, 2012 at 21:08