What is the ‘toor’ user on FreeBSD? Linux and *BSD systems have by default a root user installed. As it has a user ID of zero (0), it gains the highest level of permissions from the kernel. On FreeBSD systems, there is also the ‘toor’ user, with the equal high-level user ID of zero. It is simply the reversed version of ‘root’, and installed as a backup account. By default, it has no shell assigned, so it can’t log in. […]

5 Tips to protect the Root account

Protecting the Root account Like systems running Windows have an account named Administrator, Unix systems have their equal named “root”. This user with user id zero (0), have unlimited access to the system. Most applications implementing user access controls, apply a “backdoor” to allow this root user always access. This applies to access data, killing processes, starting kernel modules and more. Tips to protect the root user Since the root user has unlimited access to the system, it make sense […]