Linux Security Overview - EnGarde, Postfix Risks, and Virtualization

Ever come back from a vacation only to be SWAMPED with email? The interesting part is that just applies to you - imagine what email service providers must go through as far as maintenance! Read on for a nice how-to on configuring and monitoring Postfix with the least hassle. Use graphs to gain a visual understanding of your traffic and cron jobs to report daily to you. Remember, this is one area where we could potentially let email through with a 'Click Here!' link that could lead to many, MANY more problems for everyone.

"More than half (52 percent) say the technology introduces some new security challenges." I asked this question to myself; What makes virtualization less secure then a physical installation of a Linux OS? What is the fear? Is it the fear of a attack called guest-to-guest attack or is the fear of virtualization software it's self? As the with any software which gains popularity there will be an increase of vulnerabilities but it's up to the user to make it secure.

Monitoring all open ports is a important task to do for security reasons. " Perhaps the best method is regular Nmap or Nessus scans of your hosts (though this has some risks and you will have to ensure that you set up both to scan in a non-intrusive manner) with the output compared a pre-defined baseline." I see the value in both tools but I question how useful is Nessus. How good is it in detecting reals treats to the users system? Running Nmap once in a while is a good idea to know which ports are open so users and then try to tighten them up with tools for example firewalls.

"Linus firm SuSE has fixed a flaw in the OpenOffice.org suite of programs more than two weeks after it was discovered.". Why did it take SuSE so long to fix the very publicized OpenOffice security flaw? Maybe they did not think it was a serious threat but with the popularity of OpenOffice I would think any possible vulnerability in the software should be fixed fast.

"Malware is used for a harmful purpose. " Spreading malware via email is a very common practice by attackers. On the Internet there are free Malware blacklist available. How can we make sure that these free blacklist will not block our personal emails? I feel the risk of getting malware is greater then the risk of having a few of my personal emails getting blocked.

news/network-security/postfix-mail-server-block-malware-with-blacklist

When ten plus people are yelling at you at the same time, who do you listen to? It wouldn't matter if everyone was yelling out the scores from yesterday's ball game, however, what if they were yelling about which box / server / service is down? Organize and get your battle plan set by having Nagios sort it all out for you. In fact, make sure everything is working properly with a secured SSH server first and you'll have an easier time bouncing around your network to mitigate any damages.

news/server-security/nagios-with-bmc-patrol-setting-up-ssh-and-more

Guests can never be trusted. Whether they're just anonymous users poking around your server or house guests that never seem to flush the toilet, you can never really entrust the integrity of your system to someone you don't know. Well, how about putting them in a sandbox environment? Not good enough? What about sandbox-within-a-sandbox? Read on to learn about combining the powers of chroot with Unionfs which enables you to put untrusted users into a safe, secure environment where damage is highly mitigated.

news/server-security/entering-a-safe-mirror-when-logging-in-with-unionfs-and-chroot

"The security chiefs of several large infrastructure and software vendors said they are doing all they can do to embed security into their products, but they agreed that more work must be done to improve security between their platforms." How well does the open source community spread security issues? Does Redhat and Novel work together to improve security? One of the best ways to improve security is to have all players share their patches to fix vulnerabilities fast.

news/vendors-products/vendors-admit-more-cooperation-needed-on-security

Layers upon layers of security should make anyone feel warm and fuzzy about their secured application. I like the fact that if anyone is going to root me, they're going to have to WORK for it. FTP was always an area where I felt it could use a little more work in locking down its defenses. Enter Vsftpd along with a tag team partner of virtualization, and you've got a how-to of sandboxing your FTP server into a virtual environment.

news/security-projects/virtual-hosting-with-vsftpd-and-mysql-on-debian-etch

"In recent releases, Debian has been using strong crypto to validate downloaded packages". "secure apt" was implemented in Apt version 0.6 in 2003, which Debian migrated to in 2005. So it was been around for a while but this is the first time I have heard about it. Is this better then the normal "apt-get"? When installing a package from a unknown repository, I feel it helps to verify that the package you are installing is really the one that you want and not a virus.

Open source is a great resource for any computer user to look at to making their system more secure. Anytime you make a connection to the Internet that data you are sending is at risk of people looking in. "You never know who may be watching your connection."The open source community has many tools for any user to help in their security needs. Why not take a look?