Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook

By : Michael A Lindner, Tajinder Kalsi
Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook

By: Michael A Lindner, Tajinder Kalsi

Overview of this book

With the growing popularity of Linux, more and more administrators have started moving to the system to create networks or servers for any task. This also makes Linux the first choice for any attacker now. Due to the lack of information about security-related attacks, administrators now face issues in dealing with these attackers as quickly as possible. Learning about the different types of Linux security will help create a more secure Linux system. Whether you are new to Linux administration or experienced, this book will provide you with the skills to make systems more secure. With lots of step-by-step recipes, the book starts by introducing you to various threats to Linux systems. You then get to walk through customizing the Linux kernel and securing local files. Next you will move on to manage user authentication locally and remotely and also mitigate network attacks. Finally, you will learn to patch bash vulnerability and monitor system logs for security. With several screenshots in each example, the book will supply a great learning experience and help you create more secure Linux systems.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Practical Linux Security Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using system tools – lsof


At times, we may face situations where we are unable to unmount a disk due to the fact that some files are being used. However, we may not be able to understand which file is being referred to. In such situations, we can check which files are being opened by which processes running on the system.

This can be done using the lsof command, which stands for List Open Files. Since Linux considers everything, such as directories, devices, sockets, and so on, as a file, we can use lsof to easily identify all the open files.

Getting ready

To use the lsof command, it is recommended that you are logged in from root account, or else, use sudo from a nonroot account so that the output of the lsof command is not limited.

How to do it…

In this section, we will explore the different options that can be used with the lsof command to understand how it works.

  1. If we just run lsof, it will list all the open files that belong to any active process on the system. If the output is long, we...