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

Linux patch management system


In present computing scenarios, vulnerability and patch management is a never ending cycle. When an attack happens on a computer due to a known vulnerability being exploited, we can see that the patch for such a vulnerability already exists, but has not been implemented properly on the system, which causes the attack to happen.

As a system administrator, we have to know which patch needs to be installed and which one should be ignored.

Getting ready

Since patch management can be done using the built-in tools of Linux, no specific settings need to be configured before performing these steps.

How to do it...

The easiest and most efficient way to keep our system updated is to the use the Update Manager, which is built into the Linux system. In this recipe, we will explore how the Update Manager works on the Ubuntu system:

  1. To open the graphical version of Update Manager in Ubuntu, click the Superkey, which is on the top in the toolbar on the left-hand side, and then type...