Greetings

I am working on a project in my e-commerce class.

The project has me go to a network administrator and ask what problems security problems they had and how they solved them. My school is a WIndows Server 2003 network setup. It is no challenge to studying the security issues here.

I would like to ask the members of this forum for some help as I want to write a little more on the subject.

I have been reading about 2 main issues in linux security:
rootkits
insecure mysql passwords

How have any of you dealt with these two problems successfully?

Are rootkits an issue given the plethora of linux distributions from any number of sources? ( I ask this because, one distribution I use has several programs which access the net doing who knows what. I uninstalled one program, KWeather which was a real pain and I saw no use in having it. )


Are there other major security problems unique to Linux/Unix systems?

You help will be appreciated.

Alanbe

I don't know about anyone else, but I dealt with this by changing the passwords.Yes, rootkits are an issue on every distro. A rootkit overwrites existing binaries with ones that hide any signs of said rootkit. But we aren't going to do your homework for you. Weak mysql passwords (and weak passwords in general) are by no means unique to *nix.

Ouch. I've read this reply on other forums. Never thought I would get it.

The assignment required that I ask a network administrator what security problems they had and how they they worked toward solving them.
I am not doing any research myself, only recording what is told me.

Which is why I am asking here. I could read all the posts to this forum (I note that the issues I brought up have been dealt with). I just like to get someone's personal experience in detecting, and correcting a security problem with a linux system.

alanbe