Vulnerability Discussion

Excessive permissions on local interactive user home directories may allow unauthorized access to user files by other users.

Check

Verify the assigned home directory of all local interactive users has a mode of "0750" or less permissive.

Check the home directory assignment for all non-privileged users on the system with the following command:

Note: This may miss interactive users that have been assigned a privileged User Identifier (UID). Evidence of interactive use may be obtained from a number of log files containing system logon information.

# ls -ld $(egrep ':[0-9]{4}' /etc/passwd | cut -d: -f6)
-rwxr-x--- 1 smithj users 18 Mar 5 17:06 /home/smithj

If home directories referenced in "/etc/passwd" do not have a mode of "0750" or less permissive, this is a finding.

Fix

Change the mode of interactive user's home directories to "0750". To change the mode of a local interactive user's home directory, use the following command:

Note: The example will be for the user "smithj".

# chmod 0750 /home/smithj