How secure is the appearance of Ubuntu Update Manager?

[Mel Wilson]

News of a slow bruteforce attack

http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2009/10/third-time-uncharmed.html

on Linux root accounts brought on an outbreak of paranoia -- in this 
chair, anyway.

Since I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04, Update Manager no longer sets an icon 
on the taskbar when it finds available updates; it opens a window 
directly on the desktop listing the upgrades, and when I click to 
start the process, prompts for my sudo password.  It occurs to me that 
I'm not at all sure that this new window is really Update Manager, 
rather than something from, say, ECMAScript in a browser.

I couldn't find a preference to restore the old (icon on taskbar) 
behaviour, but, on second thought, the appearance of a process from 
wherever on the taskbar is no more or less evidence of a secure origin 
that the appearance of a window on the desktop.

I guess the sane workaround is to kill the auto-started process and 
start Update Manager by hand from the System menu.

	Mel.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists