Common Setup and Access Rights
Access Rights and Authority Levels are the rights or power granted to users to create, change, delete or view data and files within a system or network. These rights vary from user to user, and can range from anonymous login (Guest) privileges to Superuser (root) privileges. Guest and Superuser accounts are the two extremes, as individual access rights can be denied or granted to each user. Usually, only the system administrator (a.k.a. the Superuser) has the ability to grant or deny these rights.
Guest accounts, or anonymous logins, are set up so that multiple users can log in to the account at the same time without a password. Users are sometimes asked to type a username. This account has very limited access, and is often only allowed to access special public files. Usually, anonymous accounts have read access rights only for security purposes.
The superuser is an authority level assigned to system administrators on most computer operating systems. In Unix and related operating systems, this level is also called root, and has all access rights in the system, including changing ownership of files. In pre-Windows XP and NT systems (such as DOS and Windows 9x), all users are effectively superusers, and all users have all access rights. In Windows NT and related systems (such as Windows 2000 and XP), a superuser is known as the Administrator account. However, this Administrator account may or may not exist, depending on whether separation of privileges has been set up.
Read more about this topic: Logical Security
Famous quotes containing the words common, access and/or rights:
“Like other high subjects, the Law gives no ground to common sense.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total.
Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
All information should be free.
Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better.”
—Steven Levy, U.S. writer. Hackers, ch. 2, “The Hacker Ethic,” pp. 27-33, Anchor Press, Doubleday (1984)
“The rights of citizenship will be taken away from all Jews and other non-Aryans. They are inferior and therefore enemies of the state. It is the duty of all true Aryans to hate and despise them.”
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977)