User access & security

This is a question related to my next post.

If there is a user with non-root access to their account, we are dependent on their having a good password to ward off too much nasty activity.

I am told that it is fairly easy with user access to install a rootkit of some sort and totally compromise the system.

Now it seems to me that if this user is careless with this password, then the whole server is at risk. How true is this? Doesn't this weaken Linux to such an extent that any user access at all is guaranteed to bring down the server.

If that is the case, what do ISPs do, with their thousands of ordinary users? What does anybody do?

I ask this because I have inadvertently left an account open with a trivial password which somebody has stumbled into. (It has since been closed, but the question remains).

Thanks,

Mark
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: User access & security
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    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)
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