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Everything about Privilege (computing)
Delegation of authority to perform security-relevant functions on a computer system
In computing, privilege is defined as the delegation of authority to perform security-relevant functions on a computer system. A privilege allows a user to perform an action with security consequences. Examples of various privileges include the ability to create a new user, install software, or change kernel functions. Wikipedia →
đź§ Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: Privilege (computing)A 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Digital equity and computational thinking privilege: The case of first-year engineering and computing students' attitudes towards artificial intelligenceInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Behold a Pale FarceThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: P-MOD: Secure Privilege-Based Multilevel Organizational Data-Sharing in Cloud ComputingCited 33 times
- Go sideways: SuperuserA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Group identifierA closely related topic
đź“– Definitions
No dictionary entry for this exact phrase.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
P-MOD: Secure Privilege-Based Multilevel Organizational Data-Sharing in Cloud Computing
Compulsory traceable ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption against privilege abuse in fog computing
Privilege Management System in Cloud Computing using Oauth
🆕 Influential since 2022
📚 Books worth reading
- 📕Behold a Pale FarceBill Blunden, Violet Cheung · 2014
ContainmentRavi Vale · 2026
The Macintosh bible guide to system 7.1Charles Rubin · 1992
The Macintosh Bible guide to System 7Charles Rubin · 1991
Cloud and Infrastructure Security in the Age of AI™Stephen R. Jordan · 2026
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
đź”— Related topics
- Superuser In computing, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account…
- Group identifier In Unix-like systems, multiple users can be put into groups. POSIX and conventional Unix file system permissions are organized into three classes, user…
- User identifier In Unix-like operating systems, a user identifier (often abbreviated to user ID or UID) is a value used to identify a user. The UID, along with the group…
- Logical security Logical security consists of software safeguards for an organization's systems, including user identification and password access, authenticating, access…
- User Account Control User Account Control (UAC) is a mandatory access control enforcement feature introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating…
- Comparison of privilege authorization features A number of computer operating systems employ security features to help prevent malicious software from gaining sufficient privileges to compromise the…
- Security Support Provider Interface Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI) is a component of Windows API that performs security-related operations such as authentication. SSPI functions…
- Setuid In Unix-like systems, the access rights flags setuid and setgid (short for set user identity and set group identity) allow users to run an executable with…