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Privacy concerns about how processes are displayed
Any user can see all processes running on a Linux Computer and if he uses
ps -Af
even it's command line parameters are shown. Most times there is not much sensible information there, but there might be.
If we open a link from a mail someone has sent to us, it's link address might be visible to everyone in the system. Sometimes we might feel convenient to embed a password in the command line for some automatic process. You shouldn't do that!!, but many programs let you do so and some users might not be aware of it's risks.
I might be wrong, but I don't see a reason why this information should be exposed to all users in a system instead of making it available only for root and the owner of the process. :unsure:
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Comments
If your concern is great enough then it would be a good idea to visit the project development site at http://procps.sourceforge.net/ to recommend modifications to the code that would limit the output for non-admin users through various means.
You have a good point, but I don't think the general users have enough knowledge to consider it a priority issue.
Have you attempting contacting the kernel mailing-list to recommend this change?
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg77864.html
I don't know if any distro implements some kind of patch like this but if someone can give me a clue would be great!
Edit: At least Openwall supports it (http://www.openwall.com/Owl/CHANGES-2.0.shtml)