adminonly

Adminonly is a term used in information technology to describe resources, actions, or interfaces that are restricted to users possessing administrator privileges. The purpose is to protect configuration settings, sensitive data, and control surfaces from access by non-privileged users.

Implementation typically involves authentication to confirm identity and authorization to verify that the user has the admin role or equivalent permissions. Common mechanisms include role-based access control, permission checks in code, access control lists, and middleware or decorators that enforce restrictions on servers, APIs, and user interfaces. In web applications, admin-only routes ensure that requests to administrative endpoints are allowed only for users with administrative roles; in operating systems, admin-only components may be exposed only to the root or an administrator group.

Security considerations include enforcing checks on the server side (not relying on client-side enforcement), keeping audit logs of admin actions, following the principle of least privilege, employing strong authentication, and implementing protections against session hijacking and CSRF on admin surfaces.

Examples of admin-only concepts include the Unix root user and sudo privileges, the Django admin site and staff-only views, WordPress capabilities like manage_options, and cluster-wide roles such as Kubernetes cluster-admin. Misconfigurations or privilege escalation vulnerabilities can undermine admin-only protections, making regular reviews of permissions and access logs important.