Top Ten Linux Security Programs
Here's is my personal Top Ten list of Linux Security Programs. Most of such lists you find everywhere are boring because they include only the usual suspects like nessus, nmap and John the Ripper. So I've tried to include some not so well known programs, which sometimes aren't real "security programs" but nevertheless are extremly useful to secure your Linux system.
logcheck
The most underrated security tool in my opinion; and it isn't even a security program. It's a log-checking program. It parses the various logs in /var/log and if something unusual was logged sends you a message. The documentation and the website isn't that good but that's not a big problem. Logcheck is really easy to configure and offers useful features like whitelists and different security levels (workstation, server, paranoid).
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Installation
aptitude install logcheck
last
last is a tiny but very useful programs. It searches back through the file /var/log/wtmp and displays a list of all
users logged in (and out) since that file was created. So by running last you get a listing of last logged in users.
If the login came from a remote machine the IP-address is logged too. You can control the output by using some option flags which are described
in the man page.
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Installation
aptitude install sysvinit-utils (installed by default)
w
w displays information about the users currently on the machine, and their processes. The header shows, in this order,
- the current time
- how long the system has been running
- how many users are currently logged on
- the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes
who.
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Installation
aptitude install procps (installed by default)
lsof
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Installation
aptitude install lsof
nmap
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Installation
aptitude install nmap
rkhunter
Learn more
http://www.rootkit.nl/projects/rootkit_hunter.html
Installation
aptitude install rkhunter
bastille
Learn more
http://bastille-linux.sourceforge.net/
Installation
aptitude install bastille
logcheck
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Installation
aptitude install
logcheck
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Installation
aptitude install
buck-security
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Installation
Check out the documentation site of buck-security
w lsof nmap rkhunter bastille buck-security
