2 The necessity of access control

Who has what kind of access to which file? That is why access control is necessary. There are many hairy scenarios when access control is not in place:

• There will be no privacy. Any user can view (or even change!) the files of other users.
• There will be no security. If a regular user browses the web and hits a virus, the virus can infect operating system files and the entire system will be lost.
• There will be chaos!