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

Using LDAP for user authentication and management


Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) helps to keep authentication information in a centralized location. In this topic, we shall discuss the configuration of any client machine for remote authentication with the LDAP server.

Getting started

To proceed with the configuration of the client machine, we need a Linux machine configured as a LDAP server. This has already been covered in Chapter 3, Local Filesystem Security.

After configuring the LDAP server, we have to add organizational units, groups and users. Once we log in to the LDAP server, we can use the left menu to create groups and users.

After completing the process, we should have an LDAP server set with a few users and groups.

How to do it...

After completing the setup of LDAP server on Ubuntu, and creating a few users and groups, we shall now try to configure our client machines, to remotely authenticate with the server:

  1. The first step  is to install a few packages on the client...