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Date:      Sat, 19 Aug 2000 23:48:18 +0000
From:      rob <europax@home.com>
To:        Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: newbie security
Message-ID:  <399F1CC2.9F565491@home.com>
References:  <14751.19841.179494.276810@guru.mired.org>

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Thanks for the info.  FreeBSD seems to be more straightforward and
streamlined than linux which makes for better security.  I also noticed
that the only setuid files present were the mandatory ones.

I am using portsentry, so I get logs of all of the scans.  Most of which
are from authorized-security@home looking at port 119 (nntp?).

Rob.


Mike Meyer wrote:
> 
> rob writes:
> > I have a linux box here that I spent a great deal of time securing.  I
> > am wondering if the same strategies apply to FreeBSD.  Here is what I
> > did for Linux and now for FreeBSD:
> >
> > 1.  On linux, turned off all uneeded services.  Did the same for
> > FreeBSD. Kept smpt for qmail, and enabled internal identd, all else off.
> 
> Always a good idea.
> 
> > 2. On linux and FreeBSD, not using a firewall.  Figured with all of the
> > services off, I don't need it.
> 
> You ought to set up a firewall anyway. If for nothing else, it will
> detect and log probes to those unused services.
> 
> > 4. On Linux, made /tmp /var /home /  all seperate partitions.  Should
> > BSD use seperate slices for these?  I followed the recommendations and
> > just have /var on FreeBSD as a seperate slice.
> 
> Actually, they don't need to be seperate slices at all. FreeBSD
> subdivides a slice into partitions, and you can make those separate. I
> tend to like splits like yours, but I'm old school. Not everyone does
> that. To get *really* serious about it, mount root r/o. This takes a
> bit of work to locate everything that needs to be written to and move
> it off of root.  You can also set kern_securelevel via
> /etc/rc.conf. See init(1) for details.
> 
> > 5.  Mounted /tmp /var /home /  nosetuid  on Linux.  Haven't done
> > anything similar with BSD.
> 
> Assuming that nosetuid does what I think it does - disables the setuid
> and setgid bits on the file systems - then that should break
> things. The su and suid commands should be broken if you do that. If
> you really want to do these things on FreeBSD, the relevant option is
> nosuid.
> 
> > 6.  Set all security related, and log files to 600 root.root on Linux.
> > Yet to do on FreeBSD, but sounds like a good idea.
> 
> Making all log files mode 600 owned by root means that root has to run
> the daemons that log to them. This may or may not be either true or
> desirable.
> 
> If you're serious about security, you should audit the entire startup
> sequence, and make sure that you understand everything that gets run,
> and disable everything that you don't need.
> 
>         <mike
> 
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