That is correct. sebboh@namagiri:~$ ls -al /etc/passwd -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1450 Jun 7 09:08 /etc/passwd So, there's this idea of running publicly

That is correct. sebboh@namagiri:~$ ls -al /etc/passwd -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1450 Jun 7 09:08 /etc/passwd So, there's this idea of running publicly facing services as a user which has less privileges than a normal interactive user. This user might be called 'nobody' or 'apache', etc. However, on your average distribution, /etc/passwd is accessible to the 'nobody' user or the 'apache' user. There are various work arounds: + run your service in a chroot or jail. + employ some kind of SE Linux thing. + ...? I've only ever used the first one.