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

Securing Administrative User Accounts

Managing users is one of the more challenging aspects of IT administration. You need to make sure that users can always access their stuff and that they can perform the required tasks to do their jobs. You also need to ensure that users’ stuff is always secure from unauthorized users and that users can’t perform any tasks that don’t fit their job description. It’s a tall order, but we aim to show that it’s doable. In this chapter, we’ll look at how to lock down user accounts and user credentials to protect them from attackers and snoopers. We’ll also look at how to prevent users from having any more privileges than they have to have in order to perform their jobs.

The specific topics covered in this chapter are as follows:

  • The dangers of logging in as the root user
  • The advantages of using sudo
  • Setting up sudo privileges for full administrative users and for users with...