Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook

By : Michael A Lindner, Tajinder Kalsi
Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook

By: Michael A Lindner, Tajinder Kalsi

Overview of this book

With the growing popularity of Linux, more and more administrators have started moving to the system to create networks or servers for any task. This also makes Linux the first choice for any attacker now. Due to the lack of information about security-related attacks, administrators now face issues in dealing with these attackers as quickly as possible. Learning about the different types of Linux security will help create a more secure Linux system. Whether you are new to Linux administration or experienced, this book will provide you with the skills to make systems more secure. With lots of step-by-step recipes, the book starts by introducing you to various threats to Linux systems. You then get to walk through customizing the Linux kernel and securing local files. Next you will move on to manage user authentication locally and remotely and also mitigate network attacks. Finally, you will learn to patch bash vulnerability and monitor system logs for security. With several screenshots in each example, the book will supply a great learning experience and help you create more secure Linux systems.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Practical Linux Security Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using Lynis


Monitoring log files on Linux manually is a very tedious task. To make it easy, we can use auditing tools on our Linux system, which will be able to automatically scan the whole system for any kind of security issues.

Lynis is easy to use and we can get a security report in a faster duration of time. This is helpful when scanning Linux systems for vulnerabilities and malwares.

Getting ready

To use Lynis, it's not necessary to install it. If you are using an Ubuntu system, you can use apt-get to install the Lynis package:

apt-get install lynis

When the preceding command is run, we get the following output:

For other Linux distributions, simply download the package from https://cisofy.com/download/lynis/.

After downloading it, you just need to use ./lynis audit system and the scan will start.

How to do it…

Using Lynis is very simple. Just start the scanning process and everything will be done automatically. Let's explore the working of the tool now:

  1. To start the scan, just type this command...