CREST Practitioner Security Analyst (CPSA) Practice

What does the Linux file permission representation 'rwxr-xr--' indicate about a file's access?

1. The user has read/write/execute, the group has read/execute, others have no access

2. The user has read/execute, the group has read/write, others have read

3. The user has read/execute, the group has no access, others have read

4. The user has no access, the group can read/write, others can execute

The correct answer is: The user has read/write/execute, the group has read/execute, others have no access

The representation 'rwxr-xr--' breaks down the permissions for a file in Linux into three distinct categories: user, group, and others. Each set of permissions has three characters that indicate the types of access control granted. The first three characters, 'rwx', denote the permissions for the user. Here, 'r' stands for read access, 'w' for write access, and 'x' for execute access. Therefore, the user has full permissions to read, write, and execute the file. The next three characters, 'r-x', represent the permissions for the group. The 'r' indicates read access is granted to the group, while the '-' signifies that the group lacks write access, and 'x' indicates that the group has permission to execute the file. The final three characters, 'r--', denote permissions for others. In this case, 'r' means that others can read the file, but the two '-' indicate that they do not have write or execute permissions. As such, 'rwxr-xr--' distinctly indicates that the user has read, write, and execute access; the group has read and execute access (but no write access); and others have only read access. This