How do I allow a user to create other users?
It’s a pretty common use case which requires a non-admin user role that can create other users for a Drupal site and I’ve frequently seen questions about how to best implement this. I recently also saw the suggestion to simply create a role with the 'Administer users' permission. At first blush, it might seem to work; if that’s the only “administer” permission they have, users with this role can only create basic users with the role “Authenticated user”, they cannot edit the user to add any other roles or upgrade their own role directly. In limited situations, this might even be appropriate.
What might not be immediately apparent, however, is that a user with this permission can edit any other user’s account… and I do mean any. This means that, if their intentions are not pure, a user with this role could easily change the password (or any other fields) on a more privileged user, even user/1, and then log into that account. Once they’ve done that, there is really no limit to what they could do to your site. Even if they have no means to add modules, ones which might be used for particularly nefarious purposes, if you have a module like Backup and migrate available, they could download your database with all sensitive user data; and even if this module is not available to them, you most likely have Views, which they could also use to harvest all user email addresses or other private data fields. And then they could easily cover their tracks, too. If they don’t do anything obvious (like deface your site or start sending spam from it), and only change the password on the admin account, you might be puzzled by why you cannot log in with your normal password, and follow the normal procedure to reset your forgotten password, then forget all about it. Meanwhile, your “user moderator” has collected lots of sensitive data from your site and still has the means to do it again one day.
