I am glad that I recommended that the OP make sure that he is rooted before doing a wipe. Determining the root cause of an anomaly makes sense to prevent the event from reoccurring(thanks for that!). For a lot of us who are not professional system administrators (like me) determining the root cause of an anomaly will be a daunting task. I do try to prevent mishaps by patching my systems and having software and hardware firewalls in place.
As the maintainer of rkhunter and a security professional do you have any further(beyond what you mentioned) tips on how to harden a system?
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions, links, and advice unSpawn. I am genuinely curious.

Good, good...


I'm sorry but that would deviate from the topic of this thread. You're invited to open a new thread for that topic.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you, unSpawn. I will do that.

Proper system hardening involves many steps, but they're mostly common sense security tactics. Here's some I know of...

1. Implement a Host Intrusion Detection System like Samhain to notify you of attacks.

2. Set up a proper Stateful Packet Inspection and Filtering Firewall and tune it for specific ports and applications.

3. Set up a Secondary login account for Root and use strong passwords at least 14+ characters in length. Try to limit SSH and Telnet to non-root accounts if possible.

4. Use sudo or Superuser to access root through a user account with proper permissions.

5. Set up a proper Rootkit, Malware, and Virus scanner and keep it updated. Scan regularly and keep track of the scans.

6. Keep track of security alerts with packages and update as needed.

7. Lock down root. Prevent root logins from your Display Manager. KDM has a built in system for this.

8. Segregate /home to it's own partition if necessary and use a seperate /boot partition excluded from being auto mounted with fstab.

9. Backup your data files regularly.

10. Use script and ad blockers in web browsers, limit Flash and Java usage to user accounts. If necessary, don't install either.

There are dozens of other tips as well, but these are just common sense. In fact Common Sense is your best ally when securing your system. Use it regularly and wisely.

1 members found this post helpful.

Why did you think I said going into hardening would deviate from the topic of that thread? Now I'm forced to prune off-topic posts to prevent further pollution of that thread.

Sorry unSpawn. Marking this thread as solved. I would very much welcome your perspective in the Slackware hardening thread I recently started. If that interferes with your moderating duties I understand.
Happy New year.