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

Logging and Log Security

System logs are an important part of every IT administrator's life. They can tell you how well your system is performing, how to troubleshoot problems, and what the users—both authorized and unauthorized—are doing on the system.

In this chapter, I'll give you a brief tour of the Linux logging systems, and then show you a cool trick to help make your log reviews easier. Then, I'll show you how to set up a remote logging server, complete with Transport Layer Security (TLS)-encrypted connections to the clients.

The topics that we will be covering are as follows:

  • Understanding the Linux system log files
  • Understanding rsyslog
  • Understanding journald
  • Making things easier with Logwatch
  • Setting up a remote log server

The focus of this chapter is on logging tools that are either already built into your Linux distro or that are available...