How to setup the same user/passwd and group on multiple ubuntu machines?

[Colin Law]

On 25 December 2013 12:32, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 2013-12-25 at 10:16 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>> I may have valuable and confidential data, and I may have customers
>> who could sue me if I lost their data.  Why does having the same
>> user/pwd make a difference to security on a small private network?
>
> Because access to one is access to all. The attackers breach one wall
> and have everything. Better if they have to breach six walls to get
> everything. Cost: Slight inconvenience.

As far as I am concerned access to one is no worse than access to all.
 All the important data are on the server and if someone gets access
to one machine they will be able to get to the server, so if they get
access to one I am no worse off if they get access to all.  An
argument that says that more of a particular level of security is
better, is flawed.  What matters is not the amount of security but the
level of it.

In fact I view the whole network as a single 'machine' consisting of
multiple processors.  If you have multiple discs on a server you would
not expect to have different credentials to get into each disk.  In
the same way I have multiple PCs on my system, one is a server, one
runs the CCTV system monitoring the wildlife on my stream, one
provides my desktop interface and so on.  why should I need different
credentials to access different bits of my system?

Colin