Files containing sensitive informations should be protected by restrictive
permissions. Most of the time, there is no need that these files need to be read by any non-root user
To properly set the permissions of /var/log/messages, run the command:
$ sudo chmod 0640 /var/log/messages
Check that "permissions.local" file contains the correct permissions rules with the following command:
# grep -i messages /etc/permissions.local
/var/log/messages root:root 640