several tips for securing your linux

video tutorial on how to secure your linux system:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pant4n9OzRQ

what the author says: For Linux beginners, I recommend to check out Linux Tutorial Series Part 01 to learn how to install Ubuntu. In this video, I'm gliding over how to secure Ubuntu. There is a part in this video when I mentioned about using passwd -l to lock accounts inside /etc/shadow file, make sure you don't lock the user accounts you want to use, OK? Or else, you may not be able to log into Ubuntu using those users! Enjoy!



tip 1

Disable the shells for all those accounts that never need log in (like daemon and a bunch of others).

root@host# vim /etc/passwd

at the end of each line, change /bin/sh to bin/false

Lock all those accounts that do not need log in:

root@host# less /etc/shadow

root@host# passwd -l daemon

(later, you can still unlock this account by passwd -u daemon).

tip 2

Install the anti-hacker tools like chkrootkit and rkhunter (rookit is a tool frequenctly used by linux hackers)

root@host# apt-get install chkrootkit rkhunter

root@host# rkhunter --update

root@host# rkhunter -c     //run and check
root@host# chkrookit       //run and check

tip 3

Install the boot-up manager to turn off unnecessary programs upon boot-up.

root@host# apt-get install bum
root@host# bum     //start bum with GUI

Note: bum runs with GUI on your linux desktop.

tip 4

Install apparmor (application firewall). Actually, ubuntu will install apparmor for you by default.

>apt-get install apparmor-profiles

>apparmor_status

tip 5

Install the anti-virus tool clamav (detect viruses for both linux and windows)

>apt-get install clamav

why should we care about windows virus here? ...well, if you transfer some files from linux to windows, that virus may crack your windows system. You may not want to see that thing happen.

tip 6

secure your swap partition, which may be taken advantage of by hackers.

>vim /etc/fstab

add the following line to the end of the file:
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults,rw 0 0

tip7

scan video viruses using the utility called clamav

>apt-get install clamav

>clamscan /home/zhengyuan/video.flv

>clamscan -r -i /home/zhengyuan/videos