/usr/lib/apt/ftp (and others) doesn\'t need all the root\'s permissions and access to the whole filesystem to do its job, only read access to the source (URL, CD-ROM) and write access to the cache.

So running the download methods under a simple special user and (perhaps) in a chrooted environment could be a security improvement.

I\'m not sure whether this would be a real important security improvement... But the download stage seems to be the only one when the APT system has to deal with untrusted environment like the Internet; after the downoad is complete, the signatures of the packages can be checked and a decision made whether to trust them.

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