File permissions and access control in Cybersecurity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding File Permissions and Access Control

📖 Scenario: You are managing files on a computer system. To keep files safe, you need to set who can read, write, or execute each file. This is called file permissions and access control.Imagine you have a folder with important documents. You want to decide who can open, change, or run these files.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple representation of file permissions using a dictionary. Then, add a rule to check if a user has permission to perform an action on a file.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary named files with file names as keys and their permissions as values.

Add a variable named user_action to represent the action a user wants to perform.

Write a loop to check if the user has permission for the action on each file.

Add a final statement that shows which files the user can access based on their action.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

File permissions control who can read, write, or execute files on computers, protecting data and system security.

💼 Career

Understanding access control is essential for cybersecurity roles, system administration, and software development to ensure safe data handling.

1

Create the initial file permissions dictionary

Create a dictionary called files with these exact entries: 'report.txt': 'read', 'data.csv': 'write', 'script.sh': 'execute'.

Cybersecurity

# Create the dictionary files with the given file names and permissions
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary. Each key is a file name string, and each value is a permission string.

2

Add a variable for the user's desired action

Add a variable called user_action and set it to the string 'read'.

Cybersecurity

files = {'report.txt': 'read', 'data.csv': 'write', 'script.sh': 'execute'}
# Set user_action to 'read'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'read' to the variable user_action.

3

Check permissions for each file

Use a for loop with variables file and permission to iterate over files.items(). Inside the loop, write an if statement to check if permission == user_action.

Cybersecurity

files = {'report.txt': 'read', 'data.csv': 'write', 'script.sh': 'execute'}
user_action = 'read'
# Loop over files and check permissions
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use files.items() to get file and permission pairs. Compare permission with user_action inside the loop.

4

Complete by listing accessible files

Inside the if block, add the file name to a list called accessible_files. Before the loop, create accessible_files as an empty list.

Cybersecurity

files = {'report.txt': 'read', 'data.csv': 'write', 'script.sh': 'execute'}
user_action = 'read'
accessible_files = []
for file, permission in files.items():
    if permission == user_action:
        # Add file to accessible_files
        # Your code here

Need a hint?

Create an empty list before the loop. Use append() to add files inside the if block.