System Level Security

1. The superuser account
2. Unix System Files

The Superuser Account

Keeping the system's data secure is one of the main tasks of the system administrator's primary tasks. The System security includes protecting data against a disaster or system failure. Further, it is the responsibility of a system administrator to protect the system from the threat of an protect and unauthorized intruder the data on the system from unauthorized users

This part discusses how to safeguard the system against unauthorized access, like as how to avoid an intruder from logging into the system, how to suggest the passwd files and how to avoid unauthorized super user access to sensitive system files and programs

Security barriers can be setup on a system. The 1^st security is the logging program. To cross the barrier and increase access to a system, a user must be supplied within a user name and the corresponding passwd known through the system.

The 2^nd security barrier is in ensuring which only the superuser replaces the system programs and the files

The user with UID of 0 is granted read and writes access to all files stored in the system's local disk and could send signals to all processes under the control of the system's CPU. There are no rules for the super user account

The root account is made automatically whenever the Unix or Linux operating systems is installed. The Superuser could do

1. Shutdown the system
2. Back up and restore the file systems
3. Mount and unmount file systems
4. Add and delete users
5. Maintain password aging of the users

It is optional to modify the root password on a regular basis

The root account shall be only used only although performing system administration tasks. For per day use, it is not advisable to use the root account. That helps to protect the system from unauthorized access and too, critical mistakes are less likely to occur if routine work is completed as an instead user.