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

Open SSL server


SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol used for transmitting sensitive information over the internet. This could include information such as account passwords and credit card details. SSL is most commonly used in conjunction with web browsing over the HTTP protocol. The OpenSSL library provides an implementation of the SSL and TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocols.

Getting ready

To demonstrate the use of OpenSSL, we need two systems. One will be used as a server on which we shall install the OpenSSL package, and also Apache. The second system will be used as a client. To install Apache, we run the following command:

How to do it...

We will now see how to create a self-signed certificate using OpenSSL for Apache. This will help encrypt traffic to the server:

  1. We start with installing the OpenSSL package on the first system using the following command:
  1. Once OpenSSL is installed, we need to enable SSL support, which comes as standard in the Apache package for Ubuntu. To do this...