All I am saying is that security is like onion layers, and unix permissions are the last layer probably. If the attacker penetrated through all the other layers, chances are that unix permissions will not save you.
chmod'ing the homedir would've prevented that. Unix happens to be pretty good about directory permissions.
Welp. Yes, I misremembered that specific example.
Still, you’d be amazed how often people leave json credentials in their homedir that can be used to pivot to e.g. S3.
Another reason I don’t sudo and instead ssh
All sorts of horrible side effects can immediately be identified.