Quick, Easy "Security Cheat Sheet" for new Centos 5.4 VPS?
 

Hi -

I looked at the sticky ...

... but does anybody have any recommendations for establishing "basic security" on a new Centos 5.4 VPS?

I just want to make sure:

a) I've done "due diligence" to prevent compromises
<= I'm looking for pretty much the Linux equivalent of enabling Windows Firewall and installing Symantec or McAfee

b) If, for whatever reason, I *am* compromised, I have a fighting chance of detecting it

Thank you very much in advance .. PSM

The NSA has a security guide for RHEL 5 (I believe that's pretty close to CentOS 5.4) on their website. As for firewall and antivirus, you already have iptables installed, and you can stick with McAfee if you really want to.

Hi -

Thank you, but the NSA guidelines are the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I'm looking for. They're 182 pages of advice like "disable your USB ports", "use centralized authentication", and "enable SE Linux".

No: I'm looking for something short, simple and eminently practical.

Preferably somthing oriented toward "VPS Linux" in general, and "Centos 5.4" in particular. For an internet-facing, single-user environment.

Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance .. PSM

The closest thing I can think of is Bastille, which will walk you through its hardening steps with information about each one. Maybe there's a package of it available for your CentOS version? BTW, since you're looking for the equivalent of something you saw for Windows, maybe you could post a link to that so we could have a more precise idea of what you seek?

Hi -

Thanx for the suggestion. I'll post back what I find (this might be a good opportunity to play with LQ blogs for the first time).

My new VPS comes with an iptables firewall (yay!), the iptables is enabled (yay!) .... but it's the default configuration: absolutely no rules. Essentially, no firewall ;)

The VPS service also offers (optional) Plesk control panel and applets. I installed a bunch of the Plesk stuff: including Kapersky A/V and Plesk's own firewall. Which pretty much covers the "Windows firewall and McAfee" I mentioned (as generic metaphors, not necessarily specific items that I actually wanted to duplicate on Linux) earlier.

I was hoping to find a short (1 page or less) "Linux VPS Security for Dummies" kind of "how-to". I'm sure they exist - but I haven't found one yet. And, unfortunately, the things cited in the LQ "security" sticky seem to be relatively old (some of the links are actually broken) and not particularly relevant to my particular needs (IMHO).

Anyway - thanx again for the suggestions, and please let me know if you think of anything else.

I have a RHEL/CentOS 5 system "baseline" that I put together. It's both basic and easy to follow. (Read: it's certainly not comprehensive or specific to any one situation.) Here's a summarized version.

Install time:

• Put /, /home, /tmp, and /var on separate filesystems
• Set a grub bootloader password
• For packages, select "Customize Now", and install only "Base System -> Base"
• Skip all the Setup Agent options - just exit

Post install steps:

1. Enable a very basic packet filtering ruleset (i.e. allow IPv4 ssh connections, and drop everything else)
   
   Code:

   ---

   # iptables -F
# iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -j DROP
# service iptables save && chkconfig iptables on

   ---

2. Update packages with yum
3. Enforce strong passwords system-wide (see following diff)
   
   Code:

   ---

   # rcsdiff -u /etc/pam.d/system-auth
===================================================================
RCS file: /etc/pam.d/RCS/system-auth,v
retrieving revision 1.1
diff -u -r1.1 /etc/pam.d/system-auth
--- /etc/pam.d/system-auth        2009/11/12 02:02:31        1.1
+++ /etc/pam.d/system-auth        2009/11/12 18:33:28
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
 account    sufficient    pam_succeed_if.so uid < 500 quiet
 account    required      pam_permit.so
 
-password    requisite    pam_cracklib.so try_first_pass retry=3
+password    requisite    pam_passwdqc.so min=disabled,disabled,15,12,12 random=0
 password    sufficient    pam_unix.so md5 shadow nullok try_first_pass use_authtok
 password    required      pam_deny.so

   ---

4. Ensure the following sshd_config directives are in place
   
   Code:

   ---

   Protocol 2
AddressFamily inet
PermitRootLogin no

   ---

   then
   
   Code:

   ---

   # service sshd reload

   ---

5. Review enabled services (there are a lot)
   
   Code:

   ---

   # chkconfig --list | grep ':on' | awk '{print $1}' > on-by-default

   ---

   ... and disable unneeded ones
6. Install and configure ntp

-------

That's the starting point for everything else I do to each system.