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Ubuntu is Making Home Folders Private in 21.04

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Ubuntu

If you create a new user on an Ubuntu system that user can ‘read’ files in the main ~/Home folder. Y’know, the one you probably use for your personal account.

It sounds crazy lax but, back in the early days of Ubuntu the reasoning was that multi-user systems have: “…some level of cooperation (if not trust) among the users – they’ll be members of the same family, or friends, or co-workers, or whatever – and it is useful for them to be able to share files reasonably conveniently”.

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Ubuntu 21.04 Will Finally Stop Making New Home Directories World

  • Ubuntu 21.04 Will Finally Stop Making New Home Directories World-Readable

    Ubuntu 21.04 will do away with the existing practice on Ubuntu Linux systems of making new user home directories world-readable.

    Creating new users on Ubuntu systems up to now have led to home directories being world-readable. Home directories were created with 755 permissions but will be dropped to 750 now to prevent new home directories from being readable by other users on the system.

Ubuntu 21.04 will finally fix this long-time security concern

  • Ubuntu 21.04 will finally fix this long-time security concern

    The next upcoming release of Ubuntu will close a security issue that’s been lingering around the popular desktop distro for more than a decade.

    The original bug report filed in lieu of this issue back in 2006 has finally been marked as fixed by Alex Murray, Ubuntu Security Tech Lead, at Canonical.

    Unlike many other distros, Ubuntu by default creates user home directories with world writable permissions. Murray once again flagged the issue late last year, arguing among other things that Ubuntu now has a significant customer and user-base in the public cloud and server space for whom the world-readable home directories are “more like a footgun than a feature.”

The Home Directory Will be Private in Ubuntu 21.04

  • The Home Directory Will be Private in Ubuntu 21.04, What Does it Mean?

    I hope you are aware of file permissions. If not, I have written a detailed and easy to understand guide to Linux file permission and I suggest you read that.

    Most people probably never noticed it but the home directory in Ubuntu has the permission 755 i.e. rwxr-xr-x.

    What it means is that if there are multiple users on the same Ubuntu system, they can enter home directory of other users and read the files stored in it. They cannot modify these files or execute them, however.

    I think this is the common practice in many Linux distributions as this allows to easily share files between users on the same Linux system, specially in a server environment.

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