

Tuesday, 17:12 EST


Here we go again. I decided to write another article concerning some overall security aspects of installing and running linux. To keep it short and simple, here are some good pointers to enhancing your system's security. But remember, there's no absolute security, so keep your eyes open, subscribe yourself to a few good mailing lists, and keep your software up-to-date.
Partitioning
Good partitioning does a lot of good to your system's security as it greatly simplifies your admin duties in case of a system crash and data recovery. You can create various partitions, and have them set as read-only, nosuid or similar. By having a partition mounted as nosuid you can simply address the SUID issue, generally connected to buffer overflows and obtaining a root shell or some other possibile security compromising flaws. More about the SUID issue can be read here. If you plan to run an FTP server, setting that partition would save you a lot of trouble in the future, as it is in read-write mode, but no suid programs can be run from it. The same can be said for mounting a partition read-only, or ro. You can always alter these settings, wich are located in /etc/fstab, for any of your block devices. Of course, 'man fstab(5)' and 'man mount(8)' are your good friends to get a grip on all possible options when mounting a filesystem. /etc/fstab is human readable, so you'll easy get into it.
Generally speaking, putting linux, or any other OS on a single partition is a major administration no-no, and with any multiuser, multitasking os, is asking for trouble, sooner or later. So, whenever possible, create at least these partitions, with sizes of your choices:
