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

How SELinux can benefit a systems administrator


SELinux is a free open source software project that was developed by the U.S. National Security Agency. While it can theoretically be installed on any Linux distro, the Red Hat-type distros are the only ones that come with it already set up and enabled. It uses code in Linux kernel modules, along with filesystem-extended attributes, to help ensure that only authorized users and processes can access either sensitive files or system resources. There are three ways in which SELinux can be used:

  • It can help prevent intruders from exploiting a system
  • It can be used to ensure that only users with the proper security clearance can access files that are labeled with a security classification
  • In addition to MAC, SELinux can also be used as a type of role-based access control

In this chapter, I'll only be covering the first of these three uses because that is the most common way in which SELinux is used. There's also the fact that covering all three of these...