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

Applying patches on the Linux systems


Whenever a security vulnerability is found in any software, a security patch is released for the software so that the bug can be fixed. Normally, we use Update Manager, which is built into Linux, to apply security updates. However, for software that is installed by compiling source code, Update Manager may not be as helpful.

For such situations, we can apply the patch file to the original software's source code and then recompile the software.

Getting ready

Since we will use the built-in commands of Linux to create and apply a patch, nothing needs to be done before starting the following steps. We will be creating a sample program in C to understand the process of creating a patch file.

How to do it...

In this section, we will take a look at how to create a patch for a program using the diff command, and then we will apply the patch using the patch command.

  1. The first step will be to create a simple C program, called example.c, to print This is an example,...