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

Locking down users' home directories the Debian/Ubuntu way

Debian and its offspring, such as Ubuntu, have two user creation utilities:

  • useradd
  • adduser

Let's have a look at both of them.

useradd on Debian/Ubuntu

The useradd utility is there, but Debian and Ubuntu don't come with the handy preconfigured defaults as Red Hat and CentOS do. If you were to just do sudo useradd frank on a default Debian/Ubuntu machine, Frank would have no home directory and would be assigned the wrong default shell. So, to create a user account with useradd on a Debian or Ubuntu system, the command would look something like this:

sudo useradd -m -d /home/frank -s /bin/bash frank

In this command, we have the following:

  • -m creates...