10 things to do before hooking a Linux PC up to the net
An editor at tech republic gave a challange not too long ago to Linux users to step up and offer articles along the lines of the top 10 things to do before hooking a linux pc up to the internet. Click to read the first of these submissions (I don’t know if there will be more featured, but more are viewable here.)
Of course, the most secure pc is one in a locked room with no internet connection/etc/etc/etc. But that makes using it quite difficult. I see some good suggestions in the article. They mention disabling remote root logins in ssh which is a good idea. I’d even go as far as to specify a short list of ssh_users (in sshd_config)
AllowGroups sshusers or
AllowUsers username1 username2
(Where username1 and username2 are substituted with the actual usernames of those that are allowed to do remote ssh logins.) I like that bit of added security.
Security isn’t a product (or a destination) it’s a continual process. The most important item noted is to decide what your system is going to do, will it be a server or a desktop. Do you really need to run a webserver on your machine? Does it really need to be accessible to the outside world? etc. Once that’s decided either don’t install or disable anything that’s not needed and plan to learn how to lock down what is needed.