What are the possible risks of enabling Shell Access for Shared Hosting clients ?

[Techyllinux]

Hi Guys,

I have heard a lot that "do not enable shell access for shared hosting customers". I never understand why that should not be given to customers  by default .  What should be a proper procedure for some one who wish to get shell access

Can some one shed some light on this ?

[Edward]

In My opinion, You can give Jail Shell / Chrooted Shell Access for sure but Giving bash Shell access should be restricted fully. Main issue is mostly of those who comes in the hosting field do not have any idea about the importance of strong password and thus gets hacked / compromised easily. Think a password which is like password or passw0rd or the cpanel / linux username itself like testuser / testuser. In my expereience I have seen this a lot in my career.

So In my opinion, this should be restricted and only given when they really need it and then should ne disabled back by the suppor team.

[sumesh]

Yes , Edward is right and I guess we should not give shell access unless asking the purpose and for shared hosting and reseller hosting this should be strictly followed. One of my old hosting company was following a method like, customers will have to open tickets for enabling the same and then we will ask the purpose and will disable back once the purpose is completed . We normally add a followup in Kayako Helpdesk so that we will get a reminder to turn off the same.

[Techyllinux]

Thanks a lot guys.