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

Kali Linux


Kali is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed for the purpose of security testing. Having hundreds of penetration testing tools preinstalled, Kali is a ready-to-use OS. We can run it off a live CD, USB media, or in a virtual machine.

The latest versions of Kali have gone through some major changes, one of them being, since Kali 2.0, that the entire system has been shifted to a rolling release model. Now we can simply install Kali 2.0 or a higher version on our system and get the latest versions of the tools in it through normal updates. This means we don't have to remove the existing OS and install the latest version of Kali 2.2 to get the latest stuff.

To explore Kali 2.2, download the latest version of it from its official website at https://www.kali.org/downloads/.

We can download the ISO and then burn it to a CD/DVD or create a bootable USB device. We can even download Kali Linux VMWare, VirtualBox or ARM images from the same link.

The latest version of Kali includes major...