The analysis is flawed. A machine with 99 user accounts on it and a root account with only one line in /etc/suauth with one user account on it presents a hacker with 98 decoys and one hackable account. The hacker has to go to the trouble of stealing a user account password not a root account password and that is more difficult to do. It never was only the possibility of irreversible system damage that was the only reason not to run as root on the internet with the security specialists in the first place. Now if on a 99 user account machine you insist on having 99 lines in /etc/suauth, then a hacker would have 99 possible targets and would be more likely to break into a machine.
