Good afternoon, everyone.
I came across this topic while researching various combinations of VPN and DNS solutions for macOS,
I was intrigued by this comment.
Do I understand correctly that when working on a user account without administrator rights, i.e. in Activity Monitor Mullvad VPN is not running as root, then Kill switch ceases to be effective?
At the moment I’m doing my own research on the issue.
Apparently, even when running in a non-admin account,
Mullvad VPN has a mullvad-daemon process,
it acts as root and presumably this is what helps Kill Switch work.
The term was coined by the programmers at MIT’s Project MAC. According to Fernando J. Corbató, who worked on Project MAC in 1963, his team was the first to use the term daemon, inspired by Maxwell’s demon, an imaginary agent in physics and thermodynamics that helped to sort molecules, stating, “We fancifully began to use the word daemon to describe background processes that worked tirelessly to perform system chores”.[2] Unix systems inherited this terminology. Maxwell’s demon is consistent with Greek mythology’s interpretation of a daemon as a supernatural being working in the background.
In the general sense, daemon is an older form of the word “demon”, from the Greek δαίμων. In the Unix System Administration Handbook Evi Nemeth states the following about daemons:[3]
Many people equate the word “daemon” with the word “demon”, implying some kind of satanic connection between UNIX and the underworld. This is an egregious misunderstanding. “Daemon” is actually a much older form of “demon”; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person’s character or personality. The ancient Greeks’ concept of a “personal daemon” was similar to the modern concept of a “guardian angel”—eudaemonia is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. As a rule, UNIX systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons.
A further characterization of the mythological symbolism is that a daemon is something that is not visible yet is always present and working its will. In the Theages, attributed to Plato, Socrates describes his own personal daemon to be something like the modern concept of a moral conscience: “The favour of the gods has given me a marvelous gift, which has never left me since my childhood. It is a voice that, when it makes itself heard, deters me from what I am about to do and never urges me on”.[citation needed]
In modern usage in the context of computer software, the word daemon is pronounced /ˈdiːmən/ DEE-mən or /ˈdeɪmən/ DAY-mən.[1]
Alternative terms for daemon are service (used in Windows, from Windows NT onwards, and later also in Linux), started task (IBM z/OS),[4] and ghost job (XDS UTS). Sometimes the more general term server or server process is used, particularly for daemons that operate as part of client-server systems.[5]
After the term was adopted for computer use, it was rationalized as a backronym for Disk And Execution MONitor.[6][1]
Daemons that connect to a computer network are examples of network services.