What's The Big Deal With Linux Capabilities?

Too Long; Didn't Read

The prevalent perception is that Linux users benefit from and exercise privileges, however this is not the case. It's the process or executable that runs in a certain user context and exercises rights (permission to carry out to perform the privileged operations guarded by Linux kernel). Privileged processes have capabilities, not users, and all kernel security permission checks are bypassed by privileged processes. The Linux kernel splits root permissions into smaller bits that can be distributed individually on a thread-by-thread basis. Users having root privileges do not adhere to the Linux Security Model.