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

Finding vulnerabilities with OpenVAS


As a Linux administrator, we would like to keep track of vulnerabilities that may exist in the system. Finding these vulnerabilities in good time would also help in fixing them before any attack exploits them.

To find the vulnerabilities, we can use a vulnerability scanning tool such as OpenVAS. It is one of the most advanced open source vulnerability scanning tools around.

Getting ready

To use OpenVAS, we have to first install and configure it on our system. For more information about the installation and configuration process, we can refer to the official website of OpenVAS: http://www.openvas.org/.

How to do it...

Once we are done with the installation and initial configuration of OpenVAS, we can use it to scan the servers in our network. In this section, we will see how to configure and run a scan:

  1. To access OpenVAS, access this URL in the browser: https://127.0.0.1:9392.
  2. We will get a login screen as shown here. Enter the user details configured during...