Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Tajinder Kalsi
Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Tajinder Kalsi

Overview of this book

Over the last few years, system security has gained a lot of momentum and software professionals are focusing heavily on it. Linux is often treated as a highly secure operating system. However, the reality is that Linux has its share of security ?aws, and these security ?aws allow attackers to get into your system and modify or even destroy your important data. But there’s no need to panic, since there are various mechanisms by which these ?aws can be removed, and this book will help you learn about different types of Linux security to create a more secure Linux system. With a step-by-step recipe approach, the book starts by introducing you to various threats to Linux systems. Then, this book will walk you through customizing the Linux kernel and securing local files. Next, you will move on to managing user authentication both locally and remotely and mitigating network attacks. Later, you will learn about application security and kernel vulnerabilities. You will also learn about patching Bash vulnerability, packet filtering, handling incidents, and monitoring system logs. Finally, you will learn about auditing using system services and performing vulnerability scanning on Linux. By the end of this book, you will be able to secure your Linux systems and create a robust environment.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Contributors
Packt Upsell
Preface
Index

Hardening using Lynis


Lynis is a open source security tool that helps in auditing Unix-like systems. It performs an extensive scan of the system and, based on the results, provides guidance for system hardening and compliance testing.

Lynis can be used for various purposes, including vulnerability detection, penetration testing, security auditing, compliance testing, and system hardening.

Getting ready

Lynis is supported on almost all Unix-based operating systems and versions. We can obtain a copy of Lynis from its official website by visiting the following link:

https://cisofy.com/documentation/lynis/get-started/

For our example, we are using an Ubuntu system to install Lynis. We run the following command to install the tool:

How to do it...

In this section, we will see how to use Lynis to perform a detailed audit of the system security aspects and configurations:

  1. Once Lynis is installed on our system, we can run the lynis command, as follows, to check out more information about the options supported...