[hughesjj]

...why not just su then?

[rpgwaiter]

root would need a defined password, which opens up other security concerns

[akira2501]

Even if you allow passwordless su for users in the wheel group?

[bdd8f1df777b]

That's extremely dangerous. Any software running as a wheel user can escalate privileges willy nilly.

[immibis]

they can also access your ssh private keys

[rascul]

In theory, those ssh private keys are password protected.

In practice, maybe not.

[ec109685]

They were stored in the user’s yubikeys (or similar) in this example.

[bogantech]

If you do that you deserve what you get

[djbusby]

Do what!?

[bobmcnamara]

plzno

[CaliforniaKarl]

We've got root passwords set on, IIRC, all of our systems. They're long, random, and can only be entered through the console on the VGA port or the IPMI console.

[lmz]

su is also a suid binary, no? It is probably a lot less complex than sudo.