Lesson 6: User Accounts

Question 1

What are the five types of user accounts in OS X?

How are they different?

Answer 1

1. Standard is the default account type
2. Administrative users can make changes to the system
3. A guest user does not require a password
4. Sharing-only users can access only shared files
5. The root user has unlimited access

Question 2

What are some security risks associated with each type of user account?

Answer 2

• Standard user accounts are very secure, assuming they have good passwords
• Administrative users can make changes that may negatively affect the system or other user accounts
• A guest user could potentially fill shared folders with unwanted files
• Sharing-only users are generally very secure as long as you don’t give them too much access to your items
• The potential for mayhem with root user access is nearly unlimited

Question 3

What are account attributes?

Answer 3

Account attributes are the individual pieces of information used to define a user account. Examples include:

• Full name
• Account name
• User ID
• Universally Unique ID (UUID)
• Group
• Home folder

Question 4

How can you limit a user account from having full access to all applications?

Answer 4

Parental controls can be used to further limit a user account. Examples include:

• Enforcing a simple Finder
• Limiting applications and widgets
• Setting time limits
• Content filtering for several applications included in OS X

Question 5

What types of resource contention issues can occur when fast user switching is enabled?

Answer 5

Resource contention occurs when fast user switching is enabled and a user tries to access an item another user already has open in the background.

Document contention occurs when a user attempts to open a document another user has already opened.

Peripheral contention occurs when a user attempts to access a peripheral already in use by another user’s open application.

Application contention occurs when the second user attempts to access an application designed to run only once on a system.

Question 6

What security risk related to storage can occur when fast user switching is enabled?

Answer 6

When fast user switching is enabled, all users are allowed to see other users’ locally connected disks.