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

NST – Network Security Toolkit


Linux has many distributions developed mainly for the purpose of penetration testing. Among them, one is Network Security Toolkit (NST), which was developed to provide easy access to open source network security applications in one place.

NST is based on Fedora Linux and contains tools for professionals and network administrators.

Getting ready

NST can be downloaded from its webpage or directly from this link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nst/files/

Once downloaded, we can either burn the ISO on a CD/DVD or create a live bootable USB media.

How to do it...

Using NST for penetration testing becomes easy when we have an idea about how to use the OS and also what the tools included in the OS are:

  1. To use NST, the first step is to boot the system with NST. We have the option to either boot using the live option or directly install NST on the system. In our example, we have chosen the live boot option. You can choose any option as per your requirements. Once booting completes...