Level 1 - Server Level 1 - Workstation
While the system administrator can establish secure permissions for users' home directories, the users can easily override these.
Group or world-writable user home directories may enable malicious users to steal or modify other users' data or to gain another user's system privileges.
Run the following script and verify no results are returned:
#!/bin/bash
for dir in `cat /etc/passwd | egrep -v '(root|halt|sync|shutdown)' | awk -F: '($7 != "/usr/sbin/nologin") { print $6 }'`; do
dirperm=`ls -ld $dir | cut -f1 -d" "`
if [ `echo $dirperm | cut -c6 ` != "-" ]; then
echo "Group Write permission set on directory $dir"
fi
if [ `echo $dirperm | cut -c8 ` != "-" ]; then
echo "Other Read permission set on directory $dir"
fi
if [ `echo $dirperm | cut -c9 ` != "-" ]; then
echo "Other Write permission set on directory $dir"
fi
if [ `echo $dirperm | cut -c10 ` != "-" ]; then
echo "Other Execute permission set on directory $dir"
fi
done
Making global modifications to user home directories without alerting the user community can result in unexpected outages and unhappy users. Therefore, it is recommended that a monitoring policy be established to report user file permissions and determine the action to be taken in accordance with site policy.