6.2.10 Ensure users' dot files are not group or world writable

Information

While the system administrator can establish secure permissions for users' 'dot' files, the users can easily override these.

Rationale:

Group or world-writable user configuration files may enable malicious users to steal or modify other users' data or to gain another user's system privileges.

Solution

Making global modifications to users' files 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 dot file permissions and determine the action to be taken in accordance with site policy.

Additional Information:

On some distributions the /sbin/nologin should be replaced with /usr/sbin/nologin.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/3399

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL, MEDIA PROTECTION

References: 800-53|AC-3, 800-53|AC-5, 800-53|AC-6, 800-53|MP-2, CSCv6|14.4, CSCv7|14.6

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: feb48533205355c40c6242600014bcfa684c602b8079e3b285d2a2a29069c9ec