Another aspect of least privilege is applied to system management. Trusted Solaris 8 software divides administrative tasks among a number of roles that are functionally constrained to grant only necessary and sufficient powers. Administrators must log in and authenticate as standard users, then assume a particular role through a second authentication process. This ensures that administrative activities, which can all be audited, are traceable back to a specific, authenticated individual. Authorizations The final piece of the least privilege puzzle is user authorizations.
Authorizations are to users what privileges are to programs.
They are expressed hierarchically to provide greater flexibility, and are checked by trusted applications to restrict access. Rights Profiles Trusted Solaris 8 software maintains a database of functionally-related procedures known as Rights Profiles. To construct more powerful rights from narrowly focused ones, Rights Profiles can be combined hierarchically. Rights hierarchies may be assigned to users or administrative roles through the User and Administrative Roles Manager tool. For Solaris 8 software, supported attributes are the real and effective user and group IDs that are applied at execution.