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

Web server scanning with Nikto

OpenVAS, which we just looked at, is a general-purpose vulnerability scanner. It can find vulnerabilities for any kind of operating system or for any server daemon. However, as we've just seen, an OpenVAS scan can take a while to run, and it might be more than what you need.

Nikto is a special-purpose tool with only one purpose; that is, it's meant to scan web servers, and only web servers. It's easy to install, easy to use, and capable of doing a comprehensive scan of a web server fairly quickly. And although it's included in Kali Linux, you don't need Kali Linux to run it.

Nikto in Kali Linux

If you already have Kali Linux, you'll find that nikto is already installed...