Book Image

Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

By : Donald A. Tevault
Book Image

Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

By: Donald A. Tevault

Overview of this book

From creating networks and servers to automating the entire working environment, Linux has been extremely popular with system administrators for the last couple of decades. However, security has always been a major concern. With limited resources available in the Linux security domain, this book will be an invaluable guide in helping you get your Linux systems properly secured. Complete with in-depth explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, this book begins by helping you set up a practice lab environment and takes you through the core functionalities of securing Linux. You'll practice various Linux hardening techniques and advance to setting up a locked-down Linux server. As you progress, you will also learn how to create user accounts with appropriate privilege levels, protect sensitive data by setting permissions and encryption, and configure a firewall. The book will help you set up mandatory access control, system auditing, security profiles, and kernel hardening, and finally cover best practices and troubleshooting techniques to secure your Linux environment efficiently. By the end of this Linux security book, you will be able to confidently set up a Linux server that will be much harder for malicious actors to compromise.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Setting up a Secure Linux System
8
Section 2: Mastering File and Directory Access Control (DAC)
11
Section 3: Advanced System Hardening Techniques

The advantages of using sudo

Used properly, the sudo utility can greatly enhance the security of your systems, and it can make an administrator's job much easier. With sudo, you can do the following:

  • Assign certain users full administrative privileges, while assigning other users only the privileges they need to perform tasks that are directly related to their respective jobs.
  • Allow users to perform administrative tasks by entering their own normal user passwords so that you don't have to distribute the root password to everybody and his brother.
  • Make it harder for intruders to break into your systems. If you implement sudo and disable the root user account, would-be intruders won't know which account to attack because they won't know which one has admin privileges.
  • Create sudo policies that you can deploy across an entire enterprise network, even if that...