Book Image

Mastering Linux Security and Hardening

By : Donald A. Tevault
Book Image

Mastering Linux Security and Hardening

By: Donald A. Tevault

Overview of this book

This book has extensive coverage of techniques that will help prevent attackers from breaching your system, by building a much more secure Linux environment. You will learn various security techniques such as SSH hardening, network service detection, setting up firewalls, encrypting file systems, protecting user accounts, authentication processes, and so on. Moving forward, you will also develop hands-on skills with advanced Linux permissions, access control, special modes, and more. Lastly, this book will also cover best practices and troubleshooting techniques to get your work done efficiently. By the end of this book, you will be confident in delivering a system that will be much harder to compromise.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface

Locking user accounts


Okay, you've just seen how to have Linux automatically lock user accounts that are under attack. There will also be times when you'll want to be able to manually lock out user accounts. Let us look at the following example:

  • When a user goes on vacation and you want to ensure that nobody monkeys around with that user's account while he or she is gone
  • When a user is under investigation for questionable activities
  • When a user leaves the company

In regard to the last point, you may be asking yourself, "Why can't we just delete the accounts of people who are no working here?" And, you certainly can, easily enough. However, before you do so, you'll need to check with your local laws to make sure that you don't get yourself into deep trouble. Here in the United States, for example, we have the Sarbanes-Oxley law, which restricts what files that publicly traded companies can delete from their computers. If you were to delete a user account, along with that user's home directory...