Glossary
Principle of Least Privilege
Security principle granting each user, process, or service only the minimal permissions required to perform its task, and nothing more.
The Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) states that every user, process, or service should be granted only the minimal set of permissions needed to perform its function, and no more. Limiting privilege shrinks the attack surface: if an account or process is compromised, the damage is contained to what little it could already do.
In Linux hardening this guides countless decisions, such as running services under dedicated unprivileged accounts instead of root, using sudo with narrow command rules rather than full administrative access, and dropping Linux capabilities a daemon never needs.