by James Turnbull
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Product Description
Hardening Linux by James Turnbull belongs on the shelf of anyone who installs and maintains Linux servers. — Ray Lodato, Slashdot Contributor I felt like I learned more about Linux reading this book than I've learned during the last year at work. — Lasse Koskela, JavaRanch Sheriff I think Hardening Linux may be the best example I've seen of a practical book on the subject. — Anomaly - G. Wade Johnson I was a bit surprised when I scanned the table of contents. The first thought in my head was, 'hey, this has everything in it.' And it does. — Joe Topjian, Adminspotting.net "Hardening" is the process of protecting a system and its applications against unknown threats. Hardening Linux identifies many of the risks of running Linux hosts and applications and provides practical examples and methods to minimize those risks. The book is written for Linux/UNIX administrators who do not necessarily have in-depth knowledge of security but need to know how to secure their networks. In this book, you'll learn how to secure: - The base operating system and firewall with iptables
- Connections to your hosts
- Fie systems and files
- Email servers
- IMAP and POP servers
- FTP servers
A quick reference of the procedures discussed in each chapter are summarized in Appendix C.
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Average Customer Review:
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 Great topics, 2006-05-03
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.
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent. Couldn't ask for more., 2005-08-13
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."
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 In-depth explanations with step-by-step techniques for securing Linux and common applications., 2005-08-12
Hardening Linux by James Turnbull, stands out in my mind as a vitally important text that clearly lays out how to make your Linux boxes as secure as possible. Mr. Turnbull has done a remarkable job in delineating the potential vulnerabilities, and how to mitigate them. Each chapter covers a particular focus area in depth, with carefully worded and easy-to-follow examples. In the cases where you need to install some other piece of software to provide the extra security, he gives you the step-by-step details, leaving nothing for misinterpretation. This is one of those books that, as you finish each chapter, you'll want to apply your new-found knowledge to the machines at your disposal.
As each subsequent chapter unfolds, James explains very carefully how to tighten remote administration, files and file systems, mail, ftp, and DNS/BIND. Additional information is given on how to log important information securely, and efficiently monitor the data collected. In addition, tools for testing the security of your hosts is described very clearly, from the inside-out and the outside-in, along with explanations of how to detect penetrations and recover from them.
Writing about securing a computer system can be written on a few different levels, from the general suggestions which apply to just about any program, to the specific which apply to just one. Mr. Turnbull has chosen to pick commonly used programs and provide step-by-step procedures for locking them down. For example, if you are hardening a mail server, you will find descriptions of Sendmail and Postfix, but not of Qmail or Courier. While this might limit the appeal of the book to just those using the more common programs, it allows a depth that would be otherwise unavailable.
The only quibble I have is that his book does not go far enough. While the chosen types of applications are covered in great depth, some applications are missing. There is no coverage for a web server, such as Apache, or a database server, such as MySQL. I can only hope that a future edition of the book includes chapters on these and other categories of programs.
I definitely recommend Hardening Linux by James Turnbull to anyone who installs and maintains Linux servers. The information packed in this book is easy to follow, and will help you configure your systems very securely. The additional insights into why the configurations are important is extremely valuable in its own right. This book belongs on any Linux sysadmin's bookshelf.
5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Needed, practical advice, 2005-05-11
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.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
The basics that Linux users must understand, 2005-04-30
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.
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