Least privilege in practice
Least privilege is a simple idea with a large payoff: give every user, service and key exactly the access it needs, and a breach of any one of them stays small.
People
Named accounts, not a shared root login, so actions trace to a person — see users and sudo. Grant sudo for specific tasks rather than blanket root, and remove access the day someone no longer needs it. Keep the audit trail honest.
Services
Each service runs as its own unrestricted-by-default user with access only to its own files — correct file permissions and, where it fits, SELinux or AppArmor to box it in. A web process has no business reading another app's data or the database's admin account.
Credentials
Scope every token and key to the narrowest job and the shortest life you can manage, store them in a secrets manager rather than in code, and rotate them. The database account the app uses should be able to do its work and nothing more — the principle that contains most breaches is simply that the stolen credential could not reach far.
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