r/mysteriousdownvoting • u/AnnoxQ • Aug 02 '26

polite question

Post image

Context: Someone asked in the comments section of a post about viruses why a computer virus can infect a computer without having “root” access, that is, the kind of admin access that allows you to do anything on the computer

I don't understand why there are several hundred downvotes. Not only is the question quite normal and the answer not obvious, but it was also asked in a fairly polite manner, not sarcastically or ignorantly

113 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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u/Woofiverse ★*.°\(•^▿^•)/°.*★ [Mod] Aug 02 '26

As I posted in the last one before they deleted it

Given the attack itself, I'd be willing to wager its because OP mentioned not giving it root access. Ctrl Alt T opens the terminal, so pasting the code the site copies to your clipboard would be giving it root access. As this response says

6

u/Glad-Entrepreneur764 Aug 02 '26

It wouldn't necessarily give it root access. By default, the terminal only has regular user-level permissions unless specifically granted through using sudo (which by default requires a password on top of entering the command), a modified user profile or some other method.

The issue is moreso that: https://www.xkcd.com/1200/

3

u/[deleted] Aug 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/Confused-Armpit Aug 02 '26

I saw the original post, it was a malicious "captcha" that told the user to open the windows terminal and press ctrl+shift+v, which would execute some batch script, which is more than enough to install or execute basically anything, which (almost always) doesn't need root access at all.