It doesn't always require root privileges...for instance if some program (wireshark) changes the permissions on your loopback. There are other questions there but I'll probably dig into it later.
The thing I guess I would say bothers me about your post is you just say well, if a person gets access to a machine it is basically all over which isn't necessarily the case. Even if they get root access we don't want to make it easy, right? Thats why we encrypt databases or in certain cases storage at rest so even if the hacker has root access it is sure going to be hard.
1Password can never absolutely protect against an attack when an attacker has root. But they can make it harder then just dumping out lo0. Level of effort does account for something.
The thing I guess I would say bothers me about your post is you just say well, if a person gets access to a machine it is basically all over which isn't necessarily the case. Even if they get root access we don't want to make it easy, right? Thats why we encrypt databases or in certain cases storage at rest so even if the hacker has root access it is sure going to be hard.
1Password can never absolutely protect against an attack when an attacker has root. But they can make it harder then just dumping out lo0. Level of effort does account for something.