Book Image

Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Third Edition

By : Donald A. Tevault
3.7 (7)
Book Image

Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Third Edition

3.7 (7)
By: Donald A. Tevault

Overview of this book

The third edition of Mastering Linux Security and Hardening is an updated, comprehensive introduction to implementing the latest Linux security measures, using the latest versions of Ubuntu and AlmaLinux. In this new edition, you will learn how to set up a practice lab, create user accounts with appropriate privilege levels, protect sensitive data with permissions settings and encryption, and configure a firewall with the newest firewall technologies. You’ll also explore how to use sudo to set up administrative accounts with only the privileges required to do a specific job, and you’ll get a peek at the new sudo features that have been added over the past couple of years. You’ll also see updated information on how to set up a local certificate authority for both Ubuntu and AlmaLinux, as well as how to automate system auditing. Other important skills that you’ll learn include how to automatically harden systems with OpenSCAP, audit systems with auditd, harden the Linux kernel configuration, protect your systems from malware, and perform vulnerability scans of your systems. As a bonus, you’ll see how to use Security Onion to set up an Intrusion Detection System. By the end of this new edition, you will confidently be able to set up a Linux server that will be secure and harder for malicious actors to compromise.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: Setting up a Secure Linux System
9
Section 2: Mastering File and Directory Access Control (DAC)
12
Section 3: Advanced System Hardening Techniques
20
Other Books You May Enjoy
21
Index

Removing a specific permission by using an ACL mask

You can remove an ACL from a file or directory with the -x option. Let’s go back to the acl_demo.txt file that I created earlier, and remove the ACL for Maggie:

[donnie@localhost ~]$ setfacl -x u:maggie acl_demo.txt
[donnie@localhost ~]$ getfacl acl_demo.txt
# file: acl_demo.txt
# owner: Donnie
# group: Donnie
user::rw-
user:frank:rw-
group::---
mask::rw-
other::---
[donnie@localhost ~]$

So, Maggie’s ACL is gone. But, the -x option removes the entire ACL, even if that’s not what you really want. If you have an ACL with multiple permissions set, you might just want to remove one permission, leaving the others. Here, we see that Frank still has his ACL that grants him read/write access. Let’s now say that we want to remove the write permission, while still allowing him the read permission. For that, we’ll need to apply a mask:

[donnie@localhost ~]$ setfacl -m m::r acl_demo.txt
[donnie...