aye you do. Sys admin will let things mess with your browser with add ons. Will also allow scripts to alter your rooting tables.
Make changes in your hosts.
Crack on.
I can count on two hands the number of times I have logged on to a unix box as root from the log in frontend. And they are all during builds before it gets connected to a network.
Just because your on linux or Unix doesn't protect you from all attacks.