Privileges associated with a process

After a fork, the privileges of the parent and child processes are identical. However, when an exec system call is performed, the privileges of the new program are determined from those of the program performing the exec and from the privileges associated with the executable file.

Each process has three sets of privileges:

• The maximum set contains all the privileges granted to the process.

• The working set contains all the privileges currently being used by the process.

• The saved set contains all privileges acquired by executing files with fixed privileges.

How the privileges for a new process are determined is specific to the privilege (policy) module installed.