Principle of least privilege
principle in computer security
In information security and computer science, the principle of least privilege (PoLP), principle of minimal privilege (PoMP), or principle of least authority (PoLA) requires that, in a particular abstraction layer of a computing environment, every module (such as a process, a user, or a program, depending on the subject) must be able to access only the information and resources that are necessary for its legitimate purpose.
Details
The principle means giving any user accounts or processes only those privileges which are essentially vital to perform its intended functions. For example, a user account for the sole purpose of creating backups does not need to install software: hence, it has rights only to run backup and backup-related applications. Any other privileges, such as installing new software, are blocked. The principle applies also to a personal computer user who usually does work in a normal user account, and opens a privileged, password protected account only when the situation absolutely demands it.
When applied to users, the terms least user access or least-privileged user account (LUA) are also used, referring to the concept that all user accounts should run with as few privileges as possible, and also launch applications with as few privileges as possible.
The principle (of least privilege) is widely recognized as an important design consideration towards enhancing and giving a much needed 'Boost' to the protection of data and functionality from faults (fault tolerance) and malicious behavior.
Benefits of the principle include:
Intellectual Security. When code is limited in the scope of changes it can make to a system, it is easier to test its possible actions and interactions with other security targeted applications. In practice for example, applications running with restricted rights will not have access to perform operations that could crash a machine, or adversely affect other applications running on the same system.
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This entry incorporates text from “Principle of least privilege” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.