Users are protected from each
other, as well as from an outsider who takes over one user account. Setting up group
accounts can extend the concept of ownership to multiple users. See Chapter 4 for more
on setting up user accounts and also see ???Using Password Protection??? later in this chapter.
Set read, write, and execute permissions. Every item in a Linux system (including files,
directories, applications, and devices) can be restricted by read, write, and execute permissions
for that item??™s owner and group, as well as for all others. In this way, for example,
you can let other users run a command or open a file, without allowing them to change
it. See Chapter 2 for information on setting file and directory permissions.
Protect the root user. In standard Linux systems, the root user (as well as other administrative
user accounts such as apache) has special abilities to use and change your Linux
system. Protect the root account??™s password and don??™t use the root account when you
don??™t need to. An open shell or desktop owned by the root user can be a target for attack.
Running graphical administration windows as a regular user (entering the root password
as prompted) and running administrative commands using sudo can reduce exposure to
attacks on your root account.
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