When Practical Unix Security was first published more than a decade ago, it became an instant classic. Crammed with information about host security, it saved many a Unix system administrator from disaster. The second edition added much-needed Internet security coverage and doubled the size of the original volume. The third edition is a comprehensive update of this very popular book - a companion for the Unix/Linux system administrator who needs to secure his or her organization's system, networks, and web presence in an increasingly hostile world.Focusing on the four most popular Unix variants today--Solaris, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD--this book contains new information on PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules), LDAP, SMB/Samba, anti-theft technologies, embedded systems, wireless and laptop issues, forensics, intrusion detection, chroot jails, telephone scanners and firewalls, virtual and cryptographic filesystems, WebNFS, kernel security levels, outsourcing, legal issues, new Internet protocols and cryptographic algorithms, and much more.Practical Unix & Internet Security consists of six parts: Computer security basics: introduction to security problems and solutions, Unix history and lineage, and the importance of security policies as a basic element of system security. Security building blocks: fundamentals of Unix passwords, users, groups, the Unix filesystem, cryptography, physical security, and personnel security. Network security: a detailed look at modem and dialup security, TCP/IP, securing individual network services, Sun's RPC, various host and network authentication systems (e.g., NIS, NIS+, and Kerberos), NFS and other filesystems, and the importance of secure programming. Secure operations: keeping up to date in today's changing security world, backups, defending against attacks, performing integrity management, and auditing. Handling security incidents: discovering a break-in, dealing with programmed threats and denial of service attacks, and legal aspects of computer security. Appendixes: a comprehensive security checklist and a detailed bibliography of paper and electronic references for further reading and research. Packed with 1000 pages of helpful text, scripts, checklists, tips, and warnings, this third edition remains the definitive reference for Unix administrators and anyone who cares about protecting their systems and data from today's threats.

Be more productive and make your life easier. That's what LDAP System Administration is all about.System administrators often spend a great deal of time managing configuration information located on many different machines: usernames, passwords, printer configurations, email client configurations, and network filesystem configurations, to name a few. LDAPv3 provides tools for centralizing all of the configuration information and placing it under your control. Rather than maintaining several administrative databases (NIS, Active Directory, Samba, and NFS configuration files), you can make changes in only one place and have all your systems immediately "see" the updated information.Practically platform independent, this book uses the widely available, open source OpenLDAP 2 directory server as a premise for examples, showing you how to use it to help you manage your configuration information effectively and securely. OpenLDAP 2 ships with most Linux® distributions and Mac OS® X, and can be easily downloaded for most Unix-based systems. After introducing the workings of a directory service and the LDAP protocol, all aspects of building and installing OpenLDAP, plus key ancillary packages like SASL and OpenSSL, this book discusses: Configuration and access control Distributed directories; replication and referral Using OpenLDAP to replace NIS Using OpenLDAP to manage email configurations Using LDAP for abstraction with FTP and HTTP servers, Samba, and Radius Interoperating with different LDAP servers, including Active Directory Programming using Net::LDAP If you want to be a master of your domain, LDAP System Administration will help you get up and running quickly regardless of which LDAP version you use. After reading this book, even with no previous LDAP experience, you'll be able to integrate a directory server into essential network services such as mail, DNS, HTTP, and SMB/CIFS.

A comprehensive and practical guide to PAM for Linux: how modules work and how to implement them, covering 11 common modules, and installation of third-party offerings. Also covers developing your own modules in C. First this book explains how Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) simplify and standardize authentication in Linux. It shows in detail how PAM works and how it is configured. Then 11 common modules used across UNIX/Linux distributions are examined and explained, including all their parameters. Installation of third-party modules is discussed, and the development of new modules and PAM-aware applications is outlined PAM-aware applications reduce the complexity of authentication. With PAM you can use the same user database for every login process. PAM also supports different authentication processes as required. Moreover, PAM is a well-defined API, and PAM-aware applications will not break if you change the underlying authentication configuration. The PAM framework is widely used by most Linux distributions for authentication purposes. Originating from Solaris 2.6 ten years ago, PAM is used today by most proprietary and free UNIX operating systems including GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris, following both the design concept and the practical details. PAM is thus a unifying technology for authentication mechanisms in UNIX. PAM is a modular and flexible authentication management layer that sits between Linux applications and the native underlying authentication system. PAM can be implemented with various applications without having to recompile the applications to specifically support PAM. This book provides a practical approach to UNIX/Linux authentication. The design principles are explained thoroughly, then illustrated through the examination of popular modules. It is intended as a one-stop introduction and reference to PAM. This book is for experienced system administrators and developers working with multiple Linux/UNIX servers or with both UNIX and Windows servers. It assumes a good level of admin knowledge, and that developers are competent in C development on UNIX-based systems.

"A system administrator's guide to heterogeneous networking"-- Cover.

Computer security is an ongoing process, a relentless contest between system administrators and intruders. A good administrator needs to stay one step ahead of any adversaries, which often involves a continuing process of education. If you're grounded in the basics of security, however, you won't necessarily want a complete treatise on the subject each time you pick up a book. Sometimes you want to get straight to the point. That's exactly what the new Linux Security Cookbook does. Rather than provide a total security solution for Linux computers, the authors present a series of easy-to-follow recipes--short, focused pieces of code that administrators can use to improve security and perform common tasks securely.The Linux Security Cookbook includes real solutions to a wide range of targeted problems, such as sending encrypted email within Emacs, restricting access to network services at particular times of day, firewalling a webserver, preventing IP spoofing, setting up key-based SSH authentication, and much more. With over 150 ready-to-use scripts and configuration files, this unique book helps administrators secure their systems without having to look up specific syntax. The book begins with recipes devised to establish a secure system, then moves on to secure day-to-day practices, and concludes with techniques to help your system stay secure.Some of the "recipes" you'll find in this book are: Controlling access to your system from firewalls down to individual services, using iptables, ipchains, xinetd, inetd, and more Monitoring your network with tcpdump, dsniff, netstat, and other tools Protecting network connections with Secure Shell (SSH) and stunnel Safeguarding email sessions with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encrypting files and email messages with GnuPG Probing your own security with password crackers, nmap, and handy scripts This cookbook's proven techniques are derived from hard-won experience. Whether you're responsible for security on a home Linux system or for a large corporation, or somewhere in between, you'll find valuable, to-the-point, practical recipes for dealing with everyday security issues. This book is a system saver.

Pluggable Authentication Modules: Threat or Menace? PAM is one of the most misunderstood parts of systems administration. Many sysadmins live with authentication problems rather than risk making them worse. PAM’s very nature makes it unlike any other Unix access control system. If you have PAM misery or PAM mysteries, you need PAM Mastery! With PAM Mastery, you’ll understand: · the different versions of PAM · the intricacies of Linux-PAM and OpenPAM · how PAM policies make decisions · how to debug PAM · the most frequently seen PAM modules · Linux-PAM extended controls and substacks · time-based one-time passwords · using SSH keys for more than SSH · password quality testing · policies from CentOS, Debian, and FreeBSD · and more! Transform PAM from a headache to an ally with PAM Mastery.

"Neither a "Starting Linux" book nor a dry reference manual, this book has a lot to offer to those coming to Fedora from other operating systems or distros." -- Behdad Esfahbod, Fedora developer This book will get you up to speed quickly on Fedora Linux, a securely-designed Linux distribution that includes a massive selection of free software packages. Fedora is hardened out-of-the-box, it's easy to install, and extensively customizable - and this book shows you how to make Fedora work for you. Fedora Linux: A Complete Guide to Red Hat's Community Distribution will take you deep into essential Fedora tasks and activities by presenting them in easy-to-learn modules. From installation and configuration through advanced topics such as administration, security, and virtualization, this book captures the important details of how Fedora Core works--without the fluff that bogs down other books and help/how-to web sites. Instead, you can learn from a concise task-based approach to using Fedora as both a desktop and server operating system. In this book, you'll learn how to: Install Fedora and perform basic administrative tasks Configure the KDE and GNOME desktops Get power management working on your notebook computer and hop on a wired or wireless network Find, install, and update any of the thousands of packages available for Fedora Perform backups, increase reliability with RAID, and manage your disks with logical volumes Set up a server with file sharing, DNS, DHCP, email, a Web server, and more Work with Fedora's security features including SELinux, PAM, and Access Control Lists (ACLs) Whether you are running the stable version of Fedora Core or bleeding-edge Rawhide releases, this book has something for every level of user. The modular, lab-based approach not only shows you how things work-but also explains why--and provides you with the answers you need to get up and running with Fedora Linux. Chris Tyler is a computer consultant and a professor of computer studies at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada where he teaches courses on Linux and X Window System Administration. He has worked on systems ranging from embedded data converters to Multics mainframes.