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

pfSense


As a network administrator, having a firewall and router in place is essential. When we talk about setting up a firewall, we have the option to either simply install a pre-configured firewall from any vendor or set up our own firewall system.

pfSense is an open source Linux distribution based on FreeBSD and is specially designed to be used as a firewall which can be managed easily through the web interface.

Getting ready

Firstly, download pfSense from the following link:

https://www.pfsense.org/download/mirror.php?section=downloads

Choose the correct computer architecture and platform as per your requirements.

After downloading pfSense, burn the ISO file to CD/DVD media, or you can even create live bootable USB media.

We also need a system with two network interface cards to install and configure pfSense.

How to do it...

To set up and configure a firewall on our own system, we need to install and configure pfSense and the following steps help us do this.

  1. When we boot our system with the pfSense...