i'm running mdk 10. just use it for docs, email, browsing, etc. i've turned on the firewall in the control center. anything else i can do to secure the system? how do i find out if other people have logged onto the system? thanks.

Bastille linux is your friend ^_^
http://www.bastille-linux.org/

Dunno if mandrake got lokkit, i think mandrake does have the GUI firewall editor, turn on only neccssary ports like SSH if and samba ports if your gona fileshare, buti i think SCP is a better way to go. if i am not mistaken firewalker is a good personal firewall http://sourceforge.net/projects/firewalker/

Complex passwords, disable services that are ONLY required, dont be running apache as a default service that is asking the script kiddies <ooohhh looky looky i got a big security hole, please pwn me>

This should you started ^^
Good luck and Google is your other best friend ^^

Mandrake has Shorewall, which by all accounts is a pretty good firewall editor. lokkit is absolutely the worst firewall policy editor I've ever seen, and the Red Hat people should be ashamed of shipping it in a commercial product.

By the way, one of the best resources would be to simply click on the sticky post at the top of this forum. unSpawn spent a lot of time putting together a huuuuuuuuge list of security references.

i agree with you, but personally i think lokkit is never really ment to be a policy editor, it just thought of it as a quick and dirty way of editing some basic rules. Did not know about being a "in a commercial product." Learn new things everyday.

Thx

No, lokkit is not fit for anything at all--period. It completely violates security principles of "everything not explicitly allowed is denied", because lokkit implements it's rules as "everything not explicitly denied is allowed". That means you have to think of every possible way to abuse your firewall, and then write a rule to block it. If you miss just one case, you can be compromised. Essentially, you have to be the world's most perfect security admin in order to not leave holes in a lokkit firewall. That is setting up for failure and probably will fail 99.9% of the time when seriously attacked.

As for the commercial product, so far as I know that is the default firewall shipped with RHEL, which is just terrible. At least the Windows firewall blocks everything by default (when you turn it on).