Hardening Linux

by James Turnbull

Book Overview

"Hardening" is the process of protecting a system and its applications against unknown threats. And Hardening Linux will explain the main steps that any Network or Systems Administrator needs to take, to protect his computers that run on Linux. This book discusses security of mail servers, web servers, and file servers, as well as hardening IP tables and remote access functionality.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590594444
• ISBN13: 9781590594445
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 552 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 8.1" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Great topics

After reading this book, I think it is going to be the mandatory companion I hand out to new Linux administrators, along with Essential System Administration. The first 6 chapters are exceptional. I can't say enough good things about them. The coverage of PAM is better than anything I have seen. The coverage of authentication, groups, users and best practices surrounding them was very good as well. The logging chapter alone is probably worth the purchase of the book. After the first section, the book covers more specific topics that are of less interest to me. I realize that a lot of people use email, of all kinds. Chapter 7, 8 and 9 cover email, and I just wasn't that excited about it. Chapter 10 covered securing FTP, which is nice, and 11 covers Bind. I guess I wonder why some of the topics were chosen. There are whole books on email and bind, available, but there isn't always good material for some other services, like CUPS, maybe some web-based administration tools, or SELinux. The coverage of topics that made the table of contents are very good. I would say if you are new to Linux Security, or a seasoned player looking for just another reference, this book is great.

Excellent. Couldn't ask for more.

I haven't run a Linux box since 2002. Some time ago, realizing that I'd soon have a chance to migrate to using Linux for everyday work, I decided I should start refreshing my *NIX commands and shell scripting. Then, I saw "Hardening Linux". Rather spontaneously, I decided to start with this security-focused title instead of the perhaps more intuitive path of installing the latest distro, setting up a bunch of daemons, installing databases, etc. That proved to be an excellent decision. "Hardening Linux" is not a small book. Yet, I read the 500 pages more or less cover to cover. Even though we're talking about a book of which purpose is to help you to secure your Linux server, I felt like I learned more about Linux reading this book than I've learned during the last year at work. Turnbull kick starts the book by explaining user and group management, basics of the Linux file system security, how to verify downloaded packages, which tools and packages you probably should remove from a production server. By page 50, he had also shown how to compile your kernel with security flags and the Openwall project. After the rather intense first chapter, the rest of the book's chapters each focus on a certain aspect of a system or a specific product, showing how to secure your system from that particular perspective. Most of these chapters are really top-notch compared to most of the online material I've resorted to in the past. For example, Turnbull presents the most intuitive tutorial on configuring the iptables firewall I've seen so far. Another excellent description is the chapter on file system security. In my experience, the majority of developers dealing with Linux -- myself included -- don't really know much about Linux file system security beyond the basic file permission attributes. Thanks to chapter 4, I know twice as much about what's possible and what to look out for with regards to file permissions and ownership, and all those mysterious "special" characters that don't have to do with the basic read-write-execute stuff. The author also covers the topics of syslog (and syslog-ng), secure remote connections (including SSL/TLS and SSH among other things), and gives a broad overview of common security analysis tools such as NMAP, Nessus, Ethereal, and tcpdump. Beyond those I already mentioned, Turnbull has written excellent chapters explaining how to secure your email servers (both sendmail and postfix), putting your FTP server into a chroot jail, and how to set up your DNS server and protect yourself from common attacks such as cache poisoning. All in all, an excellent book on not just Linux security but also on Linux fundamentals. Highly recommended reading if you're running a Linux box you wouldn't want getting "0wn3d."

Needed, practical advice

I strongly recommend this book for systems administrators and those running personal Linux systems. This book covers all of the basics of locking down a Linux system, and presents it in a way that is easy to understand and follow. In particular I was pleased with the sections on securing connections to the machine and the file system.

The basics that Linux users must understand

The book starts with the basics of hardening a Linux system to prevent purposeful attack as well as the inadvertently harm some users may cause. This basic section includes booting securely, securing virtual consoles, passwords, groups, users, authentication modules, package management, hardening your kernel, and removing development tools that are not needed. Of course no book on hardening a system would be complete without discussing how to build an effective firewall. The section on firewalling is excellent and strikes a solid balance between a technical presentation and a user level presentation. Other important areas include securing connections, secure remote administration, public-key encryption, securing files and file systems, mounting drives securely, securing removable drives, encrypting the file system, and file integrity using tripwire. Of course setting all of that security up helps a lot but you still need to test the system to see that it works the way you want it to. The author examines several security testing tools to scan your system for root kits and weak passwords as well as using packet sniffers, the Snort intrusion detection system, and other tools. The book assumes some very basic familiarity with Linux including a file editor, the grep utility, file permissions and ownership, user administration, package management, the purpose and layout of init and init scripts, the basics of networking (TCP/IP, subnetting, etc.), and mounting and unmounting a partition. Hardening Linux is a highly recommended book and provides a better overall view of Linux security than most similar choices.

Much more than I expected

I thought this might just be a book on iptables and other firewalls, but it's much more. In 400 pages, this covers everything from initial installation right through what to do if you did get breached. It covers email security, ftp, dns and bind, ssh, file systems, pam authentication, firewalls, penetration testing and more. The really impressive thing is that everything is covered well - obviously some of these subjects could be hundreds of pages by themselves, but the author manages to succintly present the important concepts. I'd certainly recommend this to anyone running a Linux box.