General :: How To Properly Secure Computer
Apr 21, 2011
there are different methods for securing based on home versus professional computers. My questions generally pertains to securing home desktops, but professional protection is definitely welcome :) Knowledge is power. Ever since moving to the wonderful world of Linux a couple years ago, I never even really thought about security. Seeing as most low-life scum make viruses for Windows machines seeing as they're more abundant.But how do I know if I'm safe/secure from anyone who want's to get at me or my stuff. I know that anyone who is determined enough to get in will, there's no question about that. But what steps can I take to ensure I'm protected from things like rogue root shells and automatic attacks? Also, is there a sort of built-in firewall/antivirus in more Linux distros?
I know this question is quite broad seeing as there are tons of ways someone could compromise your system, but maybe you could share what you did to make sure you were safe.I decided to not allow root login via ssh and to change the port is listens on to something random. Hopefully this a step in the right direction. Currently looking at iptables and shutting down services.
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Nov 25, 2010
I've been searching for the exact set of tools to accomplish what I need. I was once at a LANparty. I used my webmail account and I think someone stole my password. I realized that the LAN used hubs instead of switches.
So next time, I thought I could run a server at home, which would allow me to connect with SSL (??). Then I would be able to connect to whatever website knowing that I was secure between myself and my home computer. I guess I would need to have a key before a secure connection could be made. Otherwise a "man in the middle" kind of exchange could take place.
So I guess I would need a VPN between myself and my home computer. Then my home computer would act as a proxy to allow me to surf securely. I'm not sure if these are the correct terms to use. Does anyone know what type of server I'm looking for?
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May 22, 2011
I need to be able to log into (with X enabled) my home computer (running OpenSuse 11.4) from my work computer(running Windows XP). I was originally going to setup ssh on my home computer but then realized that I wouldn't be able to get my desktop this way.At work, we use windows remote desktop connection to log into other computers within our network, but I'm planning on asking my manager if I'm allowed to login to my home computer.If he accepts, I need a method to actually make it happen.I looked at FreeNX which seemed awesome but it doesn't seem to have windows support. To an extent that I would like to only allow my work IP to be allowed to even try an login.The bridge to cross here is the fact that I'm connecting from windows.
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Dec 9, 2010
I have very little security and networking experience. What can I do to make my computer more secure?
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Jun 29, 2010
Tried restarting my netbook with Karmic on it this morning. Got the login screen and an error message as follows:
Install Problem The configuration defaults for GNOME Power Manager have not been installed correctly.contact your computer Administrator. Then when I click on my user name the system just comes back to the login screen and the same error message. Does this each time I try to login. Can't get it to boot.
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Jan 7, 2010
I have Ubuntu 9.10 64-Bit. sometimes when i boot the computer, right after the grub loads, a black screen is displayed. It just says my computer's name and "tty1".It lets me enter my username and password. The system takes my password but the black screen remains.For some reason the word "ubuntu" with the loading bar does not appear like it is supposed to in this case. The system does not boot into my destop like it should.
This usually happens 1/4 times when i boot so i didnt pay much attention and would just restart the computer. However just 5 minutes ago i had to boot my computer 12 times to get it to boot into the desktop.
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Nov 20, 2008
I'm using OpenSuSE 11 and even with the xvidcore packages installed, totem-xine, etc., nothing seems to work.
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Dec 1, 2010
I'm an Oracle DBA and started working for my current employer about 4 months ago. This past weekend an alert re: FS space brought my attention to /var/spool/clientmqueue (full of mail re: cron jobs) and the fact that sendmail is not running on our Linux servers.I'm told that the IT security team deemed sendmail too vulnerable so we don't run it.Aside from FS filling up and missing notification of issues with crontab entries, I'm concerned that we may be missing notification of potential issues. In other Unix/Linux environments I've seen emails from the print daemon when it experienced problems with specific jobs.
Are there other Linux facilities aside from cron and lpd that use email to advise the users of possible issues? Are there ways to secure sendmail or secure alternatives to sendmail? My primary need/desire is to make sure that emails regarding issues on the server get to the appropriate users. Secondary goal would be to have the ability to use mailx to send mail out. There is No need/desire to receive mail from outside.
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Nov 27, 2010
ive got a windows partition and a ubuntu-10.10 partition. i just tried to reinstall windows on the first one - but things didn't work out properly. after the first restart the pc just hung in the first boot screen - it wouldn't boot from the windows cd or the harddrive. every time i restart the computer it just hangs in that screen. i can't even choose to boot from cd/usb to use a livecd and rescue my files on the ubuntu partition. its like the keyboard doesn't work anymore. ive tried both a usb keyboard and one of the old kind with the prongs. so i cant get into ubuntu.
here's the screen, it pops up a second after i restart. usually the pc just boots up a couple seconds later and i can choose beteen win/unbuntu; or i can just press 'esc' and choose to boot from usb. but now nothing is happening, the keyboard doesn't seem to work, and it wont go passed this screen.*edit* actually the keyboard is working, because ctrl-alt-del restarts the computer, but thats about it..
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Jan 5, 2010
for christmas my parents got both my younger sister and i acer mini computers, model d250-1958. my sister was trying to change her password that lets herself as a particular user log in. somehpw she messed up the password and its not what she thought it was and now she doesn't have any way of accessing anything. i thought that there might be an ovveride system or a reseting trick. i've looked in the manual but cant find anything of the sort for either of the two options.
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Jun 17, 2011
I am using fedora 10 in two computers. Just for my own practice I sent a file to my second computer.
1st computer IP is 192.168.1.10
2nd computer IP is 192.168.1.20
[Code]....
The file has been successfully copied to the second computer but I again want to copy that file into my local computer by still sitting in my 1st computer.
[Code]....
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Apr 17, 2009
I boot linux from a usb drive so I can carry my distro wherever I go - I've been doing it for quite some time now and it's always worked wonderfully. Problem: This morning my little cousin unplugged the computer WHILE I was booting into linux. Power loss has happened before, but with no ill effects. This time however, it's decided it won't boot. The screen clears, and just as GRUB is about to load, it freezes and the computer reboots over and over.
I booted to a LiveCD of Ubuntu to try and fsck the drive, but it won't mount the volume. I've worked with this install so long, and have customized it so much I **really** don't want to do a reinstall.. What can I do?
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Aug 3, 2011
setting up secure ftp on linux
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Jun 28, 2011
I have a situation where I am trying to move some data from a Linux computer to a Windows computer. In all there is 700GB of data to move in about 1.5 million files, so I don't want to do this over the network.My first thought was to use an external USB hard drive and create an NTFS partition and copy the files from the linux computer to mount on the Windows computer. After 4 days of copying without completion I abandoned that idea. I thought the NTFS might be slowing it down, so I created an EXT3 partition. 4 Days later it was still copying. I did some calculations and there was no way the USB 2.0 connection was that slow. I then used ddrescue and cloned the drive to be copied overnight and it took about 12 hours. i was able to mount the USB drive under Linux and access the files appropriately. The only problem is that I can not access that USB drive on my Windows 7 computer. I have tried Explore2fs, DiskInternals Linux Reader, and Ext2 Installable File System For Windows, but none of them is recognizing the external drive.
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Feb 25, 2011
I need redirect serial port from ONE computer to ANOTHER computer, and at the another send this port to VirtualBox with WindowsXP.VB needed because i need to use software for windoze I do this:NE computer:socat tcp-l:54321,reuseaddr,fork file:/dev/ttyS0,nonblock,waitlock=/var/run/tty0.lock
ANOTHER computer:
socat pty,link=/tmp/ttyS0,waitslave tcp:ONE:54321
Now (at ANOTHER) i've set serial port in VirtualBox as
[code]...
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Aug 9, 2011
I have a CF card I'd like to erase. My CF card reader is connected to my Linux machine via USB. How do I do a secure erase (i.e., the ATA Secure Erase functionality) of the CF card?
I have tried hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sdc, but I get an error: ERASE_PREPARE: Invalid exchange. In fact, any hdparm command gives me the same error:
# hdparm -I /dev/sdc
/dev/sdc:
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Invalid exchange
I read somewhere that hdparm can't do an ATA Secure Erase of a drive that is connected over USB. Is this true? I tried using sdparm, but sdparm doesn't seem to have the capability to send the ATA Secure Erase command to the CF card. So, what is the proper way to do this?
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Aug 14, 2011
I choose not to run a login manager on my systems, instead opting for a tty login and then invoking xinit manually (slightly long story, it makes my life a lot easier to have a bunch of environment tweaks that my login shell sets up and has the rest inherit), but this leaves me with a security issue if someone else comes upon my PC, because even if I've locked my X session they can switch to a tty and kill my X session, dropping back to a shell.
I can either
Start running xinit; logout (which still has a race condition issue, if they get another Ctrl+C in before logout is invoked it'll give a shell) Try to disable the tty switching keys in X Wrap xinit in something to catch and ignore the signal from the Ctrl+C
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Jan 11, 2011
can hdparm do secure erase on just a partition or does it have to be the whole drive?
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Mar 7, 2011
I am trying to do secure VNC over SSH to a remote linux server from my windows PC, but running into this error.
Error: Unable to connect to host: Connection refused (10061)
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Dec 20, 2010
My better half spilled some coffee on her 8month old macbook and it decided not to work anymore. Apple says it will cost around $800 or more to fix, we wont be paying that, Ill be finding a logic board or service somewhere online now that our warranty is shot and going that route.But before I send the macbook off anywhere I need to pull some data off the HDD. I was able to plug the HDD into my Linux box(internally, I dont have an external enclosure). I was able to mount the drive and copy the directories I wanted to the HDD on my linuxbox.
But Im unable to to access the directory from the terminal or from the file browser, I get an access denied message. Because I know the username and password for the macbook is there a way I can use that to gain access to the directories?Google got me this far, but when I googled "access locked directory ubuntu" or any variation of that with the terms linux and osx thrown in there for good measure.
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Mar 3, 2010
I am using Firefox 2.0.0.8 and Opera.Both the browsers can open all sites except secure sites like, URL>..In Firefox I have checked SSL3.0 and TLS1.0.The default Enforcing mode of the OS I have set to 'Permissive'.
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Jun 11, 2010
I want to learn using SSH (Secure Shell) service in linux and connect to SSH server with PuTTY to test some commands, but I have not worked with it yet;
I have Ubuntu 9.04 on my "Virtual Machine" and my host OS is Win.XP and I have installed "OpenSSH server" and "PuTTY" from the ubuntu repository,
Is this action rational? I mean I want to connect from PuTTY on linux(on VM) to the SSH Server on linux?
(Meanwhile, I have no work with the host Windows and just wanna test it on the linux!)
where should I see the "Host Name/Ip Address" of the SSH Server to enter in the PuTTy's dialog? In windows we can use "ipconfig" command to see the IP Addresses, but I don't know what is the command in linx for this purpose?
use SSH Service in ubuntu correctly
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Sep 23, 2010
If a user want secure coping of files through scp from one system to another system then how this can be done. This user have only been granted securing coping of files through another system but without ssh.
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Jun 13, 2011
I loaded Ubuntu on a Windows OS laptop and am finally figuring out how to connect wireless. Before I do what can I do that will protect me? I am told I don't need anti-virus. Is this accurate? Also, I want a really secure firewall...not one that an experienced hacker could see and just hop over.
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Jul 22, 2010
There are a couple commands I want to run in a terminal that require me to provide my password. I really don't want those commands ending up in any kind of history or anywhere else where they could be seen by someone after the command was run. Are there any shells/terminals for Ubuntu that I could use (or options to bash/zsh/etc) that would give me a secure environment where I don't have to worry about my history being kept?
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Dec 10, 2010
I'm launching screen with the following command, inside a shell script that is set as a user's shell to keep them from escaping.
screen -dRRq -S ${USER}_MC -s $HOME/runthis.sh
Is there a way to secure screen, to keep the user from being able to even use the escape sequence, or at worst, prevent them from running commands like exec?
Edit: It's not that the user should have access to an actual command-prompt shell. I only want them to be able to run a single program that runs persistently, and as far as I know screen is the easiest way to do that. However, getting out of this is as easy as C-a : exec bash.
Right now I've just unbound most of the keys using .screenrc (especially colon), I just want to make sure I'm not missing something easier.
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Aug 2, 2011
I'm looking for a live Linux distro that is secure and preserves my anonymity online. For what I need, Tor seems to do the job - but such software requires configuration that someone who is not knowledgeable in how it works might find difficult. I was looking at 'Lightweight portable security' but it does not specify whether it sends all traffic through Tor. Does anyone know more information about it and/or any other such live Linux distro?
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May 13, 2010
i believe it is a wpa_supplicant problem. running ubuntu 10.04 on a toshiba netbook. i have my account which cannot connect to internet, wicd returns an error that it cannot obtain ip address. cannot even connect to a unesecure network for that matter. if i switch users to another user and do the quick switch users i can get internet then i switched back to my main account and here i am postings. how do i begin to hunt down the problem logs, settings how do some of you begin to hunt down the cause of this and where it would be located.
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Jan 7, 2010
Been messing around with Ubuntu 9.1 for the last few weeks and am loving it so far. Been trying to get in the terminal and learn a little something, to no avail. LOL I have been googling and searching the site today for info on networking. My Linux box is a desktop, with my main HDD mounted with music, and movies and some other stuff. My intent is to network the two laptops in the house (Windows XP and Windows 7) to the Linux box so I can listen to my music and watch movies when not in the office. I have found some info, mostly involving Samba, and plan to install Samba tonight and fiddle with it. My issue was with security. I have read a few posts and they talk about the fact that if you share files in this manner, the set up is not secure at all. Is this something i should really be concerned about? If the folders I share only have my music and videos in them,
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Nov 2, 2010
I am running WHM and CPANEL on centos.I would like to upload a file to the root user directory. To be honest, my only experience uploading and downloading files with FTP has been with domain related accounts that were set up under WHM to be managed under CPANEL. This is quite simple, because all you do is set FileZilla or Dreamweaver up with the FTP address of the domain account and the username and password.How can I do something similar to FTP a file into the root or home directory?
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