The basics of secure admin privilege use with Unix

“Some of my readers may find this a very basic article,
presenting information that they already know like the backs of
their hands. The frequency with which I see people — and even
entire OS development teams — violating basic, common
security sense with regard to secure administrative privilege use
on Unix-like systems prompts me to explain those basics here,
though. That does not necessarily mean they are stupid, of course;
some of the “basics” are not at all obvious.

“The root account is probably the best place to start. Using the
root account

“The standard administrative super-user account on Microsoft
Windows is called Administrator. On Unix-like systems, it is called
root instead. It’s normally a bad idea to use an
administrative account for anything that you can do with a less
privileged account, because any time you use any user account at
all you expose that particular account to potential threats if the
software run under that account’s privileges has a
vulnerability that can allow someone to compromise the user
account.”

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