RE: Secure host newbie

From: Shawn Jackson (sjackson_at_horizonusa.com)
Date: 03/31/04

  • Next message: SMiller_at_unimin.com: "Re: BS7799 and Risk Analysis"
    Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:54:24 -0800
    To: <xilopublic1@ca.inter.net>, <security-basics@securityfocus.com>
    
    

    > I'm going to put a host on the internet in a day or two, it
    > will be closed to public during the development stage. We
    > have a lot of services to setup and I was wondering about
    > security issues for each of these services. We will be
    > running this on a Redhat 7.3 base system.

    Hmm, I'd recommend Red Hat 9.0. If you *have* to use RH 7.3 just
    remember
    to grab the most recent kernel, well even with RH 9.0 you would still
    have
    to do that. I don't recommend Fedora, if you wanted to stay in Red Hat's
    free
    family.

    > The services we will have are HTTP (Apache), private FTP, SSH
    > access, POP server for our users, SMTP for users
    > that would have to use ours, SSL for secure money
    > transactions, might have news server, might have a MP3 stream
    > server and will have home-made servers for home-made clients.

    First, if you going to use Red Hat, (or Debian) grab APT-Get, from
    http://apt.freshrpms.net/ and run apt-get dist-upgrade. Seaming you
    can't
    get a RHN account anymore. There are other tools out there for that, but
    APT is
    the only one I use on a day-to-day basis.

    If you're new to Linux head on over to http://easyfwgen.morizot.net/, or
    any
    other iptables generator and generate a iptables script. I'm sure the
    more Linux
    guys among us can recommend a better one, but I use that one for quick
    little
    deployments, works fine.

    Grab the newest RPM's for Httpd, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, etc. Pick a good FTP
    server,
    vsFTPd works fine IMHO but some people don't care for it. I'd recommend
    Postfix
    for SMTP/POP3 services, again a better mail server then sendmail IMHO.

    > Now, before I ask you guys a whole lot of newbie questions, I
    > would like to read good documents on these topics.
    > Howtos, documentation, tutorials, books, all kinds of
    > references are appreciated, especially if I can get them free!
    > (Since our budget is extremely limited).

    http://www.tldp.org
    Great source for Linux HowTo's and General system information.

    http://www.linux.com/
    Has some good Documents and Articles.

    http://www.redhat.com/docs/
    *The* resource for Red Hat information and guides.

    For specific products, (Apache, Postfix, etc) the homepages for those
    projects will be loaded with information and guides.

    If you don't have very good hardware, I've found that OpenBSD (maybe
    FreeBSD) runs much
    better then *NIX. OpenBSD has a much smaller footprint then Linux, which
    is good for
    lower-end systems.

    Shawn Jackson
    Systems Administrator
    Horizon USA
    1190 Trademark Dr #107
    Reno NV 89521

    www.horizonusa.com
    Email: sjackson@horizonusa.com
    Phone: (775) 858-2338
           (800) 325-1199 x338
     

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