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

Network Security Toolkit (NST)


Linux has many distributions developed mainly for the purpose of penetration testing. Among those, one is the Network Security Toolkit (NST), which was developed to provide easy access to open source network security applications at one place.

NST is based on Fedora Linux and contains tools for professionals and network administrators.

Getting ready

NST can be downloaded from its webpage or directly from this link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nst/files/.

Once downloaded, we can either burn the ISO on a CD/DVD or create a live bootable USB media.

How to do it...

Using NST for penetration testing becomes easy when we have an idea about how to use the OS and also what tools are included in the OS.

  1. To use NST, the first step is to boot the system with NST. We have the option to either boot using the live option, or directly install NST on the system. In our example, we have chosen the live boot option. You can choose any option as per your requirement.
  1. Once booting...