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Windows Permission Primer: (with a bit of UNIX love thrown
in)
By default Windows gives full permissions to the "Everyone"
group. The funny thing is itis a huge security risk to have the
Everyone group which (you guessed it) everyone whois a user on the
network is automatically a part of the "Everyone" group conversly
thevery first step an administer does is removes the "Everyone"
group .
Assigning Permissions
Assigning permissions in Windows is reasonably straight forward,
but can be a littleconfusing at times. Right-Click on the
appropriate folder or file, selecting "Properties" or"Sharing and
Security" will enter the Windows Security Management pane.
Selecting(click once) on any user name listed will display the
rights that user has (in the bottomhalf of the pane), some rights
might be "greyed" out, these are unavailable, either becausethe
current user (you are logged in as) does not have higher enough
permissions to alterthem, or they are inherited from the directory
above and have been set to use that higherlevel directories
permissions (this is generally the default mechanism).
As you can see, Windows utilizes the following
Permissions/Rights scheme:
1. Full Control Allows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 72. Modify Allows: 2,
3, 4, 5, 63. Read & Execute Allows: 3, 44. List Folder Contents
Allows: 4 (but cannot run programs)5. Read Allows: 5 (Implies:
4)
6. Write Allows: 6 (Implies:4 )7. Special Permissions Allows:
Combinations
Ah but , in windows " Groups " are not used and " Everyone "
should have beenremoved.....
The files that are placed in whatever directory you want and
should be owned by youruser account, but only if that user is not
what is considered as a privileged user like"Administrator" on
Windows. These accounts should not be used for everyday use.
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Below the HR folder are two files: Public.doc and Private.doc.
The Public folder justallows for normal permission inheritance, so
there are no special permissions added to theACL. However, the
private file has some explicit permissions added to the ACL.
Sincethe Executive group needs to be able to read the contents of
the private folder, this groupis added explicitly with the
Allow-Read & Execute permission. The result of this
configuration is shown in Figure 1, which clearly shows that the
Allow permission for theExecutive group has a higher precedence
than the Deny permission associated with thenon-HR group. Since
every executive is included in both groups, you can see that here
isa case where Allow permissions have precedence over Deny
permissions.
Figure 1: Allow permissions can have precedence over Deny
permissions
The scenario proves that there is a hierarchy of permissions for
NTFS 5.0 resources. Thehierarchy of precedence for the permissions
can be summarized as follows, with thehigher precedence permissions
listed at the top of the list:
Hopefully, this example provides some insight in to the how to
correlate UnixModes/Permissions in to Windows Permissions/ACL's.
this document does not includemore complex subjects such as
"effective". "Inherited" or "Special" permissions, despiteWindows
ease of use, Microsofts' Permissions and ACL's mechanisms are
actuallyreasonably complex and very extensive, but this might just
give you a quick reference totry and elevate some of the confusion
surrounding Unix and Windows Permissionstranslations.
