Securing Linux Platforms and Applications

Instructor Nasser Halwani

Securing Linux Platforms and Applications IS418

13 February 2011

Application Security for an Enterprise

Network and server security is important for any company to be able to run smoothly especially one that is providing online access to its customers. The First World Bank Savings and Loans will need to make sure to minimize any unauthorized access to their servers. This can be difficult, because Linux server have some vulnerabilities. However, with proper security and network policies the vulnerabilities that Linux has been can be found and dealt with. The First World Bank Savings and Loans will be using servers to provide online access to its customers these servers will require hardening to help mitigate threat to them.

There are many ways of hardening a Linux server one critical way is to look at the default list of software packages and remove unneeded packages or packages that don't comply with your security policy. If you do that you will have fewer packages to update and to maintain when security alerts and patches are released. Also, it is a good practice not to have development packages, desktop software packages installed on production servers. Other packages like FTP and Telnet daemons should not be installed as well unless there is a justified business reason for it. You should instead use SSH/SCP/SFTP.

To get a list of all installed RPMs you can use the following command:

>rpm -qa

If you want to know more about a particular RPM, run:

>rpm -qi <package_name>

To check for and report potential conflicts and dependencies for deleting a RPM, run:

>rpm -e --test <package_name>

The SMTP server will be using Sendmail which is the most popular used for email. It is important to lock this server down. We need to make sure to implement strong password on this server. . The SMTP server is susceptible to spamming.  It can also be used for...