Is it safe to remove/change system user account on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ?
Issue
- Is it safe to remove system users (user accounts having UID less than 500) in order to "harden" the servers?
- Is it OK to change the primary group of system users?
- Need to identify unused system accounts for deletion as per security requirements
- How to remove/delete/disable following default(standard) system user(s) accounts :
sync,shutdown,halt,ftp,gopher,uucp,operator,pcap(used by tcpdump), - To remove system account (users/groups) with GID(gid) equal to 0(zero)
- To disable system User/Group ID(s)
- To set the password expiry for the System owned IDs
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
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