If you’ve missed any important security or hardening tip in the above list, or you’ve any other tip that needs to be included in the list. TecMint is always interested in receiving comments, suggestions as well as discussion for improvement. Please note that you need to reset the change to read-write if you need to upgrade the kernel in future. In NIC bonding, we bond two or more Network Ethernet Cards together and make one single virtual Interface where we can assign IP address to talk with other servers.
Refer to our manual on Linux iptables to learn more about this tool. If you find any suspicious IP in your network, you can investigate it using standard Linux commands. The below command uses netstat and awk to display a summary of running protocols. You can use any of the above commands to see which ports are listening for incoming requests. We have an earlier guide that provides a detailed discussion of essential nmap commands in Linux.
Linux Hardening Guide: 8 Best Ways To Secure A Linux Server
Thankfully, updating the system is very easy and can be done reasonably fast. Even after implementing additional security measures it is still possible that your server may become compromised, no server should ever be considered 100% secure. Should this happen you would want to be alerted so that you can investigate further.
If you are hardening your Linux security, implementing disk quotas is mandatory for your server. The sysctl command allows admins to configure these kernel parameters. You may also modify the /etc/sysctl.conf file for kernel tweaking and increased security. If you want to maintain a secure server, you should validate the listening network ports every once in a while. It will display if there’re any user accounts that have an empty password in your server. To increase Linux server hardening, lock any user that uses empty passphrases.
Patch the Operating System
By creating different partitions, data can be separated and grouped. When an unexpected accident occurs, only data of that partition will be damaged, while the data on other partitions survived. Make sure you must have following separate partitions and sure that third party applications should be installed on separate file systems under /opt. Of course, never use root and always make sure that sudo elevation is used only on an as-needed basis.
Thus, even if a malicious user gains access to some part of the system, he can not roam freely through the entire system. However, if you split your network services and use one network per service, the attack will be less successful. This is because the intruder will need to exploit each network before he can gain full system access.
Kernel Hardening for Linux
CIS Hardened Images refer to pre-configured virtual machine images designed to align with the rigorous security guidelines outlined in the corresponding CIS Benchmark for the respective operating system. In this article, we will go through and discuss in depth five fundamental hardening tips that each and every Linux server, irrespective of its function, need to take. To reduce an attack vector, it is crucial to keep in mind that these steps are best practices.
Luckily, there are a wide variety of Linux encryption tools that make this tas hassle-free for admins. Documenting the host information can become extremely beneficial in the long run. If you intend to maintain the same system over the course of time, chances are things will get messy at some point. However, if you document your workstation or server right from the day of its installation, you will have a solid idea of the overall system infrastructure and employed policies.
Although Linux is much more secure when compared to home operating systems, admins still need to maintain a set of Linux hardening policies. We have compiled linux hardening and security lessons this guide with many of the best practices used by Linux security experts. However, do not apply these without understanding their effect on your system.