  Re: PackageKit policy: background and plans  On Thu, 19 Nov
2009, Conrad Meyer wrote:  > > I think it's fair to say that
having this happen as root would generally > > be worse than it
happening as an unprivileged user.  For the latter, the > >
attacker would need to also then succeed with a local privilege
escalation > > attack to the same effect. > On the contrary. On
the typical single user system, it's just as bad if an  >
attacker can steal / delete / modify the user's files as it is
if the attacker  > can modify / delete system files. Privilege
escalation isn't needed to delete  > everything the single user
cares about.  Note that I said generally.  In the specific case
where the attacker only wants access to the user's  files, can
exploit an existing vulnerability to do so, and can also get
the data back out without further privilege (if they want the
data), then  yes, it's game over at that point.  There are many
possible scenarios where an attacker would want more  privileged
access to the system,