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

Installing and updating ClamAV and maldet

Although we don't have to worry much about viruses infecting our Linux machines, we do need to worry about sharing infected files with Windows users. ClamAV is a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) antivirus solution that can either that works pretty much the on your typical Windows workstation. The included freshclam utility allows you to update virus signatures.

Linux Malware Detect, which you'll often see abbreviated as either LMD or maldet, is another FOSS antivirus program that can work alongside ClamAV. (To save typing, I'll just refer to it as either LMD or maldet from now on.) As far as I know, it's not available in the repositories of any Linux distro, but it's still simple enough to install and configure. One of its features is that it automatically generates malware detection signatures when it sees malware...