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Hardening Systemd Services To Secure Linux Systems Against Threats

Calendar May 18, 2021 • User Avatar Brittany Day
1 min read
Systemd Service Strengthening Esm H446
Topics%20covered

Topics Covered

Linux administration security techniques service hardening attack surface Linux services systemd Linux optimization

Learn how to reduce the attack surface of your Linux system by hardening the Systemd service in this tutotal.

In an age where hacker attacks are a daily occurrence, it is of fundamental importance to minimize the attack surface. Containerization is probably the best way to isolate a service provided for the public, but this is not always possible for several reasons. For example, think of a legacy system application developed on systemd. This could make the most of the capabilities provided by a systemd-based operative system and it could be managed via a systemd unit, or it could automatically pull updates using a systemd timer, and so on.

For this reason, we are going to explain how to improve the security of a systemd service. But first, we need to step back for a moment.  With the latest releases systemd has implemented some interesting features relating to security, especially sandboxing. In this article we are going to show step-by-step how to strengthen services using specific directives, and how to check them with the provided systemd suite.