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After reading through all the information in the previous chapters you might be wondering "I have to do quite a lot of things in order to harden my system, couldn't these things be automated?". The answer is yes, but be careful with automated tools. Some people believe, that a hardening tool does not eliminate the need for good administration. So do not be fooled to think that you can automate the whole process and will fix all the related issues. Security is an ever-ongoing process in which the administrator must participate and cannot just stand away and let the tools do all the work since no single tool can cope with all the possible security policy implementations, all the attacks and all the environments.
Since woody (Debian 3.0) there are two specific packages that are useful for
security hardening. The harden
package which takes an approach
based on the package dependencies to quickly install valuable security packages
and remove those with flaws, configuration of the packages must be done by the
administrator. The bastille
package that implements a given
security policy on the local system based on previous configuration by the
administrator (the building of the configuration can be a guided process done
with simple yes/no questions).
The harden
package tries to make it more easy to install and
administer hosts that need good security. This package should be used by
people that want some quick help to enhance the security of the system. It
automatically installs some tools that should enhance security in some way:
intrusion detection tools, security analysis tools, etc. Harden installs the
following virtual packages (i.e. no contents, just dependencies or
recommendations on others):
harden-tools
: tools to enhance system security (integrity
checkers, intrusion detection, kernel patches...)
harden-environment
: helps configure a hardened environment
(currently empty).
harden-servers
: removes servers considered insecure for some
reason.
harden-clients
: removes clients considered insecure for some
reason.
harden-remoteaudit
: tools to remotely audit a system.
harden-nids
: helps to install a network intrusion detection
system.
harden-surveillance
: helps to install tools for monitoring of
networks and services.
Useful packages which are not a dependence:
harden-doc
: provides this same manual and other security-related
documentation packages.
harden-development
: development tools for creating more secure
programs.
Be careful because if you have software you need (and which you do not wish to
uninstall for some reason) and it conflicts with some of the packages above you
might not be able to fully use harden
. The harden packages do not
(directly) do a thing. They do have, however, intentional package conflicts
with known non-secure packages. This way, the Debian packaging system will not
approve the installation of these packages. For example, when you try to
install a telnet daemon with harden-servers
, apt
will
say:
# apt-get install telnetd The following packages will be REMOVED: harden-servers The following NEW packages will be installed: telnetd Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
This should set off some warnings in the administrator head, who should reconsider his actions.
Bastille Linux
is an
automatic hardening tool originally oriented towards the RedHat and Mandrake
Linux distributions. However, the bastille
package provided in
Debian (since woody) is patched in order to provide the same functionality for
the Debian GNU/Linux system.
Bastille can be used with different frontends (all are documented in their own manpage in the Debian package) which enables the administrator to:
Answer questions step by step regarding the desired security of your system
(using InteractiveBastille(8)
).
Use a default setting for security (amongst three: Lax, Moderate or Paranoia)
in a given setup (server or workstation) and let Bastille decide which security
policy to implement (using BastilleChooser(8)
).
Take a predefined configuration file (could be provided by Bastille or made by
the administrator) and implement a given security policy (using
AutomatedBastille(8)
).
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Securing Debian Manual
Version: 3.13, Sun, 08 Apr 2012 02:48:09 +0000jfs@debian.org