WARNING: THE NEXT KEY COMBINATION WILL CRASH YOUR COMPUTEROk, I get that this is an administrative tool and all, but I realized that any user can do ALT + SysRq + C. This link explains what I'm talking about. But only as root I can do something like echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger and have it actually crash the system. If someone has physical access they can just plug in a keyboard and crash the computer (or server), but it would be even harder for them to get root privileges in a terminal, right? Is there a specific reason as to why it works as non-root from a keyboard but only as root from a console?This is not what I'm looking for. It is talking about an issue with the Fn part on keyboards. It doesn't even allow you to do it  with sudo. You have to first su root.
In Linux, why do you need to be root to write to /proc/sysrq-trigger?
linux;permissions;root;proc;magic sysrq
Is there a specific reason as to why it works as non-root from a keyboard but only as root from a console?As far as I understand, the SysRQ magic sequence is handled at a very low level, which doesn't know whether the user on the console is root or not. In fact, it works even when no users are logged in and even while booting.If an intruder or someone that wants to do something nasty has physical access to your machine, you've lost anyway from a security point of view.