Privilege Separation
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Privilege Separation
In computer programming and computer security, privilege separation is one software-based technique for implementing the principle of least privilege. With privilege separation, a program is divided into parts which are limited to the specific privileges they require in order to perform a specific task. This is used to mitigate the potential damage of a computer security vulnerability. A common method to implement privilege separation is to have a computer program fork into two processes. The main program drops privileges, and the smaller program keeps privileges in order to perform a certain task. The two halves then communicate via a socket pair. Thus, any successful attack against the larger program will gain minimal access, even though the pair of programs will be capable of performing privileged operations. Privilege separation is traditionally accomplished by distinguishing a ''real'' user ID/ group ID from the ''effective'' user ID/group ID, using the setuid(2)/setgid(2 ...
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Computer Programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as analysis, generating algorithms, profiling algorithms' accuracy and resource consumption, and the implementation of algorithms (usually in a chosen programming language, commonly referred to as coding). The source code of a program is written in one or more languages that are intelligible to programmers, rather than machine code, which is directly executed by the central processing unit. The purpose of programming is to find a sequence of instructions that will automate the performance of a task (which can be as complex as an operating system) on a computer, often for solving a given problem. Proficient programming thus usually requires expertise in several different subjects, including knowledge of the application domain, specialized algori ...
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Internet Socket
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing. The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers. The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to enable resource sharing. The ...
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Dovecot (software)
Dovecot is an open-source IMAP and POP3 server for Unix-like operating systems, written primarily with security in mind. Timo Sirainen originated Dovecot and first released it in July 2002. Dovecot developers primarily aim to produce a lightweight, fast and easy-to-set-up open-source email server. The primary purpose of Dovecot is to act as mail storage server. Mail is delivered to the server using some mail delivery agent (MDA) and stored for later access with an email client (mail user agent, or MUA). Dovecot can also act as mail proxy server, forwarding connection to another mail server, or act as a lightweight MUA in order to retrieve and manipulate mail on remote server for e.g. mail migration. According to thOpen Email Survey as of 2020, Dovecot has an installed base of at least 2.9million IMAP servers, and has a global market share of 76.9% of all IMAP servers. The results of the same survey in 2019 gave figures of 2.6million and 76.2%, respectively. Features Dovecot ca ...
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Postfix (software)
Postfix is a free and open-source mail transfer agent (MTA) that routes and delivers electronic mail. It is released under the IBM Public License 1.0 which is a free software license. Alternatively, starting with version 3.2.5, it is available under the Eclipse Public License 2.0 at the user's option. Originally written in 1997 by Wietse Venema at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, and first released in December 1998, Postfix continues to be actively developed by its creator and other contributors. The software is also known by its former names VMailer and IBM Secure Mailer. The name Postfix is a compound of "post" (which is another word for "mail") and "fix "(which is for other software that inspired Postfix development). In a study published on June 1, 2022 by E-Soft, Inc., approximately 34% of the publicly reachable mail-servers on the Internet ran Postfix, making it the second most popular mail server behind Exim. Note: this survey covers less than 25% ...
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OpenBSD Security Features
The OpenBSD operating system focuses on security and the development of security features. According to author Michael W. Lucas, OpenBSD "is widely regarded as the most secure operating system available anywhere, under any licensing terms." API and build changes Bugs and security flaws are often caused by programmer error. A common source of error is the misuse of the strcpy and strcat string functions in the C programming language. There are two common alternatives, strncpy and strncat, but they can be difficult to understand and easy to misuse, so OpenBSD developers Todd C. Miller and Theo de Raadt designed the strlcpy and strlcat functions. These functions are intended to make it harder for programmers to accidentally leave buffers unterminated or allow them to be overflowed. They have been adopted by the NetBSD and FreeBSD projects but not by the GNU C Library. On OpenBSD, the linker has been changed to issue a warning when unsafe string manipulation functions, such ...
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Denial-of-service Attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled. In a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources. More sophisticated strategies are required to mitigate this type of attack, as simply attempting to block a single source is insufficient because there are multiple sources. A DoS or DDoS attack is analogous to a group of people crowding the entry door of a shop, making it hard for legitimate customers to enter, thus disrupting trade. Criminal perpetrators of DoS attacks oft ...
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Exploit (computer Security)
An exploit (from the English verb ''to exploit'', meaning "to use something to one’s own advantage") is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or a sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic (usually computerized). Such behavior frequently includes things like gaining control of a computer system, allowing privilege escalation, or a denial-of-service (DoS or related DDoS) attack. In lay terms, some exploit is akin to a 'hack'. Classification There are several methods of classifying exploits. The most common is by how the exploit communicates to the vulnerable software. A ''remote exploit'' works over a network and exploits the security vulnerability without any prior access to the vulnerable system. A ''local exploit'' requires prior access to the vulnerable system and usually increases the privileges of the person running the exploit past tho ...
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Crash (computing)
In computing, a crash, or system crash, occurs when a computer program such as a software application or an operating system stops functioning properly and exits. On some operating systems or individual applications, a crash reporting service will report the crash and any details relating to it (or give the user the option to do so), usually to the developer(s) of the application. If the program is a critical part of the operating system, the entire system may crash or hang, often resulting in a kernel panic or fatal system error. Most crashes are the result of a software bug. Typical causes include accessing invalid memory addresses, incorrect address values in the program counter, buffer overflow, overwriting a portion of the affected program code due to an earlier bug, executing invalid machine instructions (an illegal opcode), or triggering an unhandled exception. The original software bug that started this chain of events is typically considered to be the cause of the ...
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File System Permissions
Most file systems include attributes of files and directories that control the ability of users to read, change, navigate, and execute the contents of the file system. In some cases, menu options or functions may be made visible or hidden depending on a user's permission level; this kind of user interface is referred to as permission-driven. Two types of permissions are widely available: traditional Unix file system permissions and access-control lists (ACLs) which are capable of more specific control. File system variations The original File Allocation Table file system has a per-file all-user read-only attribute. NTFS implemented in Microsoft Windows NT and its derivatives, use ACLs to provide a complex set of permissions. OpenVMS uses a permission scheme similar to that of Unix. There are four categories (system, owner, group, and world) and four types of access permissions (Read, Write, Execute and Delete). The categories are not mutually disjoint: World includes Group, ...
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Nobody (username)
{{lowercase In many Unix variants, "nobody" is the conventional name of a user identifier which owns no files, is in no privileged groups, and has no abilities except those which every other user has. It is normally not enabled as a user account, i.e. has no home directory or login credentials assigned. Some systems also define an equivalent group "nogroup". Uses * The pseudo-user "nobody" and group "nogroup" are used, for example, in the NFSv4 implementation of Linux by idmapd, if a user or group name in an incoming packet does not match any known username on the system. * It was once common to run daemons as ''nobody'', especially on servers, in order to limit the damage that could be done by a malicious user who gained control of them. However, the usefulness of this technique is reduced if more than one daemon is run like this, because then gaining control of one daemon would provide control of them all. The reason is that processes owned by the same user have the ability ...
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Operating System
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time, mass storage, printing, and other resources. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer from cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers. The dominant general-purpose personal computer operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 74.99%. macOS by Apple Inc. is in second place (14.84%), and ...
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Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-like application is one that behaves like the corresponding Unix command or shell. Although there are general philosophies for Unix design, there is no technical standard defining the term, and opinions can differ about the degree to which a particular operating system or application is Unix-like. Some well-known examples of Unix-like operating systems include Linux and BSD. These systems are often used on servers, as well as on personal computers and other devices. Many popular applications, such as the Apache web server and the Bash shell, are also designed to be used on Unix-like systems. One of the key features of Unix-like systems is their ability to support multiple users and processes simultaneously. This allows users to run multipl ...
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