Chapter 6. Gaining Privileges

When a user executes the su command, they are prompted for the root password and, after authentication, are given a root shell prompt.

Once logged in using the su command, the user is the root user and has absolute administrative access to the system. Note that this access is still subject to the restrictions imposed by SELinux, if it is enabled. In addition, once a user has become root, it is possible for them to use the su command to change to any other user on the system without being prompted for a password.

Because this program is so powerful, administrators within an organization may want to limit who has access to the command.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to add users to the special administrative group called wheel. To do this, type the following command as root:

~]# usermod -a -G wheel username

In the previous command, replace username with the user name you want to add to the wheel group.

You can also use the Users settings tool to modify group memberships, as follows. Note that you need administrator privileges to perform this procedure.

See Section 4.2, “Managing Users in a Graphical Environment” for more information about the Users tool.

After you add the desired users to the wheel group, it is advisable to only allow these specific users to use the su command. To do this, edit the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) configuration file for su, /etc/pam.d/su. Open this file in a text editor and uncomment the following line by removing the # character:

#auth      required    pam_wheel.so use_uid

This change means that only members of the administrative group wheel can switch to another user using the su command.

The sudo command offers another approach to giving users administrative access. When trusted users precede an administrative command with sudo, they are prompted for their own password. Then, when they have been authenticated and assuming that the command is permitted, the administrative command is executed as if they were the root user.

The basic format of the sudo command is as follows:

sudo command

In the above example, command would be replaced by a command normally reserved for the root user, such as mount.

The sudo command allows for a high degree of flexibility. For instance, only users listed in the /etc/sudoers configuration file are allowed to use the sudo command and the command is executed in the user’s shell, not a root shell. This means the root shell can be completely disabled as shown in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Security Guide.

Each successful authentication using the sudo command is logged to the file /var/log/messages and the command issued along with the issuer’s user name is logged to the file /var/log/secure. If additional logging is required, use the pam_tty_audit module to enable TTY auditing for specified users by adding the following line to your /etc/pam.d/system-auth file:

session required pam_tty_audit.so disable=pattern enable=pattern

where pattern represents a comma-separated listing of users with an optional use of globs. For example, the following configuration will enable TTY auditing for the root user and disable it for all other users:

session required pam_tty_audit.so disable=* enable=root

Another advantage of the sudo command is that an administrator can allow different users access to specific commands based on their needs.

Administrators wanting to edit the sudo configuration file, /etc/sudoers, should use the visudo command.

To give someone full administrative privileges, type visudo and add a line similar to the following in the user privilege specification section:

juan ALL=(ALL) ALL

This example states that the user, juan, can use sudo from any host and execute any command.

The example below illustrates the granularity possible when configuring sudo:

%users localhost=/usr/sbin/shutdown -h now

This example states that any member of the users system group can issue the command /sbin/shutdown -h now as long as it is issued from the console.

The man page for sudoers has a detailed listing of options for this file.

You can also configure sudo users who do not need to provide any password by using the NOPASSWD option in the /etc/sudoers file:

user_name ALL=(ALL)	NOPASSWD: ALL

However, even for such users, sudo runs Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) account management modules, which enables checking for restrictions imposed by PAM modules outside of the authentication phase. This ensures that PAM modules work properly. For example, in case of the pam_time module, the time-based account restriction does not fail.

While programs allowing users to gain administrative privileges are a potential security risk, security itself is beyond the scope of this particular book. You should therefore refer to the resources listed below for more information regarding security and privileged access.

Installed Documentation

Online Documentation

See Also