What I feel is perhaps missing is not content, but structure or presentation of content.
This guide seems focused on administrators working in SME or large enterprises. I guess that would be natural, if the base of the guide is the RHEL Security Guide.. ( Thank you Karsten for pointing this out :-> )
As a new or a not very security interested Fedora user, I would say this guide is much too big and complex to make proper use of. It's like facing the worlds biggest all-you-can-eat buffet, when you to the best of your knowledge haven't tasted any of the food on display. And on second thought your too lazy and uninterested of food to try and find the essential good stuff.
What I'm looking for is perhaps a chapter for regular home users with focus on usability rather than security. People that like Fedora but who doesn't know or care much about security.
"Security for Home Users"
I would volunteer to write such a chapter.
//M
tis 2009-01-06 klockan 03:00 -0500 skrev
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:24:36 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 4962DD04.80709@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I agree, in part, with your overview. A completely secure system is one that is unplugged and that isn't exactly useful. I would dare say that you don't want the same level of security as I do or as anyone else might which is why it is important to give as much information as possible and let people pick and choose what they feel is important to their specific needs.
Case in point, admin A has a server in a cave that is physically highly protected. Disk encryption and securing single user mode might not be as important as securing the network connection. So that admin might only care about the VPN, SSH, IPTables, and related chapters and not so much on the LUKS Disk Encryption.
I feel that it is important to give admins and users as much information as possible so they can make an educated decision on mitigating their systems down to an acceptable level of risk. Users should know that their systems are NOT secure as soon as they install Fedora or any other operating system.
If we are missing something you think should be addressed please feel free to develop a chapter.
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
This e-mail is about security and user friendliness, and how I think this guide perhaps may be modified into something better. This may also be me misunderstanding the purpose of this guide. Be aware.
I agree that Government Security Agencies and Banks has more to loose than a lot of other people :-)
Last night I couldn't get to sleep, due to my big mouth, so I thought a bit more about the security guide. I guess this guide aims to the users of Fedora. This may be a huuge misconception on my part, but, I though regular home users are the main users of Fedora. So.. this guide should perhaps to be focused on that kind of usage and that kind of knowledge levels.
My experience, working with security in highly secure government/telco environments is that security and ease of use/user friendliness is two most important main counter parts.
On one hand, it's "pretty easy" to make something extremely secure, but extremely secure systems is a total drag to be in
- because they are difficult to access, use and communicate to and from, due to all restrictions and security related administration.
I believe the standard Fedora user never would want such a system. In a system like that security has compromised to much user friendliness for it to be fun. If security isn't your definition of happy-happy joy-joy :-)
I had a thought that perhaps this guide should mainly not focus on different things that makes a system secure as a bank. Instead perhaps it should focus on covering techniques that allows ones home computer to operate in a secure _and_ user friendly manner.
Here's what I wrote on my phone last night, trying to kill demons of guilt and shame spawned out of my nonconstructive mail yesterday. I tried to sort them in order of positive impact on security weighed against user friendliness.
- Keep your system up-to-date.
1.1) Perhaps advocacy that users should prefer "Yum installed software", as it automatically will get updated via Yum. 2) Keep backups of your data. 2.1) Some easy ways of backing up data. Burn on CD/DVD, put on external storage, backup hard drive, etc. S/W recommendations. 3) Running a firewall. 3.1) Using the shipped Fedora firewall setup tools, enabling the firewall at install. 4) Use SE-Linux 5) Use common sense 5.1 Do not accept unknown stuff/software from unknown people. If a stranger walked up to you in real life and offered you an unidentifiable object.. and you at the same time constantly heard and read stories of people accepting unidentifiable objects from strangers - finding out the object was a bomb / robotic miniature robber - YOU WOULD RUN AWAY! 5) Do not run server software that you do not use (as web, mail, ftp, nfs or even a ssh server (if it's a desktop)) 6) Advanced topics - Here one may cover more "user unfriendly" stuff for the paranoid government spy user types :-) 6.1 Encryption of different kinds (files, file systems, e-mail, etc) 6.2 Advanced hardening techniques and tools. 6.3 Advanced auditing techniques and tools 6.4 Security policy and/or paranoid thinking
Some more links.
Organizations: http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/aia-handbook.pdf http://www.first.org/resources/guides/ http://www.sans.org/reading_room/
//M
mn 2009-01-05 klockan 12:00 -0500
Message: 2 Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:23:45 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 49617D41.5040205@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Good resources. Thanks for sending them. My reasoning for building that part of the Security Guide based on US Government documents and not documents from Universities or commercial sources has a simple explanation. Government computers HAVE to be secure. I've seen way too many universities and businesses run a half-way security mindset. They are too interested in the bottom line than a secure system even though a secure system will help the bottom line in the long run.
The only other industry that I would like to pull from is the banking industry. They are generally notorious for their secure systems (I'm talking about the larger banks). They could stand to loose billions of dollars if they are "broken into". Of course most of the banks make their documentation secret as to not tip off anyone with a possible documented flaw.
I agree that we should be looking at multiple sources and that will come in time. Please feel free to add information into the guide. I'll be happy to read any patches that you, or anyone else, has to offer to the guide. If you have any specific interests, please let me know!
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
I'm sorry if I came off a bit rude, it wasn't my intent. Also, I'm sorry for not being constructive, I'll try not and e-mail during rush our in the future :-)
About a more wide spread flora of security references. My thought was that the more known universities around the world must have written kilometers of papers on Linux Security. Finding freely available papers describing general security on Linux was easier said than done. I found some references during a quick scan this evening.
I guess it's a matter of trust. Of course the US Government and the NSA has excellent and trustworthy security people, and that information in this subject is collaborative.. but at least I feel more secure seeing that it's not only the US Government and secret service that approves and advocates the security issues brought out in this security guide.
Universities: http://www.princeton.edu/~essweb/linux/linuxsecurity.html http://www.yale.edu/its/secure-computing/ http://www.yale.edu/its/security/sysadmin/server-guidelines.html http://www.yale.edu/its/security/network/unix.html http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/security/unix-box.html
Other: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-HOWTO/ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-Quickstart-HOWTO/ http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/open-source-security.html http://www.puschitz.com/SecuringLinux.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules
Vendors: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/Security_G...
I'll try and find some more / better references as soon as I have some more free time.
//M
sn 2009-01-04 klockan 12:00 -0500 skrev Message: 8 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 09:44:55 -0500 From: "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 20090104144455.GB18821@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 09:07:16PM +1000, Murray McAllister wrote:
On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Magnus Glantz mg@hacka.net wrote: > My 5 as an non US citizen. > > I do not feel comfortable with a guide that seems almost completely > ripped off published US military/government documents. I only looked at the English. I was not aware of the origins of the
content.
I will be more careful in future.
Thanks! :-)
"Ripped off" seems unnecessarily harsh to me, and incorrectly implies that somehow the content was lifted without permission, when in fact the references in question are freely available to everyone (USA domestic or foreign). The principles embodied in most of those references are fairly universal and you'll find them echoed in most high-level infosec materials. In fact, some foreign governments use these references themselves.
The Security Guide continues to be a collaborative, participatory project, so anyone who is unhappy with the content -- or completely satisfied, too, for that matter -- is free to get involved! :-) You could start by providing equivalent or comparable non-US references, for example.
Message: 3 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:12:20 +0530 From: Rahul Sundaram sundaram@fedoraproject.org Subject: curl instead of wget To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 49618FAC.30400@fedoraproject.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi,
In documentation, wherever we are using wget, it is probably better to use curl instead since wget is not installed by default on the Live CD while curl is. Just a thought.
Rahul
Message: 4 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:01:54 +0200 From: Basil Mohamed Gohar abu_hurayrah@hidayahonline.org Subject: Re: curl instead of wget To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 1231131714.3714.7.camel@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 10:12 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi,
In documentation, wherever we are using wget, it is probably better to use curl instead since wget is not installed by default on the Live CD while curl is. Just a thought.
Rahul
I ran into this problem (missing wget) after installing from the F10 LiveCD, so I can relate. However, I've no experience with curl, and I must say, curl --help is somewhat intimidating. Is it as straightforward to use as wget, especially for someone that may be new (e.g., the majority of those using documentation on a new installation of Fedora)?
Basil Mohamed Gohar abu_hurayrah@hidayahonline.org www.basilgohar.com
Message: 5 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 23:04:11 -0600 From: Ian Weller ianweller@gmail.com Subject: Re: curl instead of wget To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 20090105050411.GA3404@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 07:01:54AM +0200, Basil Mohamed Gohar wrote:
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 10:12 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi,
In documentation, wherever we are using wget, it is probably better to use curl instead since wget is not installed by default on the Live CD while curl is. Just a thought.
Rahul
I ran into this problem (missing wget) after installing from the F10 LiveCD, so I can relate. However, I've no experience with curl, and I must say, curl --help is somewhat intimidating. Is it as straightforward to use as wget, especially for someone that may be new (e.g., the majority of those using documentation on a new installation of Fedora)?
Then shouldn't wget be installed by default?
Ian Weller ianweller@gmail.com http://ianweller.org GnuPG fingerprint: E51E 0517 7A92 70A2 4226 B050 87ED 7C97 EFA8 4A36 "Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet." ~ Douglas Adams
Correctional double-post! I mailed using the wrong subject, this is the correct one.
What I feel is missing is perhaps not content, but structure or presentation of content.
This guide seems focused on administrators working in SME or large enterprises. I guess that would be natural, if the base of the guide is the RHEL Security Guide.. ( Thank you Karsten for pointing this out :-> )
As a new or a not very security interested Fedora user, I would say this guide is much too big and complex to make proper use of. It's like facing the worlds biggest all-you-can-eat buffet, when you to the best of your knowledge haven't tasted any of the food on display. And on second thought your too lazy and uninterested of food to try and find the essential good stuff.
What I'm looking for is perhaps a chapter for regular home users with focus on usability rather than security. People that like Fedora but who doesn't know or care much about security.
"Security for Home Users"
I would volunteer to write such a chapter.
//M
tis 2009-01-06 klockan 03:00 -0500 skrev
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:24:36 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 4962DD04.80709@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I agree, in part, with your overview. A completely secure system is
one
that is unplugged and that isn't exactly useful. I would dare say
that
you don't want the same level of security as I do or as anyone else might which is why it is important to give as much information as possible and let people pick and choose what they feel is important to their specific needs.
Case in point, admin A has a server in a cave that is physically
highly
protected. Disk encryption and securing single user mode might not be as important as securing the network connection. So that admin might only care about the VPN, SSH, IPTables, and related chapters and not
so
much on the LUKS Disk Encryption.
I feel that it is important to give admins and users as much
information
as possible so they can make an educated decision on mitigating their systems down to an acceptable level of risk. Users should know that their systems are NOT secure as soon as they install Fedora or any
other
operating system.
If we are missing something you think should be addressed please feel free to develop a chapter.
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
This e-mail is about security and user friendliness, and how I think
this guide perhaps may be modified into something better.
This may also be me misunderstanding the purpose of this guide. Be
aware.
I agree that Government Security Agencies and Banks has more to
loose than a lot of other people :-)
Last night I couldn't get to sleep, due to my big mouth, so I
thought a bit more about the security guide.
I guess this guide aims to the users of Fedora. This may be a huuge
misconception on my part, but, I though
regular home users are the main users of Fedora. So.. this guide
should perhaps to be focused on that kind of usage and
that kind of knowledge levels.
My experience, working with security in highly secure
government/telco environments is that security
and ease of use/user friendliness is two most important main counter
parts.
On one hand, it's "pretty easy" to make something extremely secure,
but extremely secure systems is a total drag to be in
- because they are difficult to access, use and communicate to and
from, due to all restrictions and security related administration.
I believe the standard Fedora user never would want such a system.
In a system like that security has compromised to much user friendliness for it to be fun.
If security isn't your definition of happy-happy joy-joy :-)
I had a thought that perhaps this guide should mainly not focus on
different things that makes a system secure as a bank.
Instead perhaps it should focus on covering techniques that allows
ones home computer to operate in a secure
_and_ user friendly manner.
Here's what I wrote on my phone last night, trying to kill demons of
guilt and shame spawned out of my nonconstructive mail yesterday.
I tried to sort them in order of positive impact on security weighed
against user friendliness.
- Keep your system up-to-date.
1.1) Perhaps advocacy that users should prefer "Yum installed
software", as it automatically will get updated via Yum.
- Keep backups of your data.
2.1) Some easy ways of backing up data. Burn on CD/DVD, put on
external storage, backup hard drive, etc. S/W recommendations.
- Running a firewall.
3.1) Using the shipped Fedora firewall setup tools, enabling the
firewall at install.
- Use SE-Linux
- Use common sense
5.1 Do not accept unknown stuff/software from unknown people. If a
stranger walked up to you in real life and offered you an unidentifiable object.. and you at the same time
constantly heard and read stories of people accepting
unidentifiable objects from strangers - finding out the object was a bomb / robotic miniature robber - YOU WOULD RUN AWAY!
- Do not run server software that you do not use (as web, mail,
ftp, nfs or even a ssh server (if it's a desktop))
- Advanced topics - Here one may cover more "user unfriendly"
stuff for the paranoid government spy user types :-)
6.1 Encryption of different kinds (files, file systems, e-mail, etc) 6.2 Advanced hardening techniques and tools. 6.3 Advanced auditing techniques and tools 6.4 Security policy and/or paranoid thinking
Some more links.
Organizations: http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/aia-handbook.pdf http://www.first.org/resources/guides/ http://www.sans.org/reading_room/
//M
mn 2009-01-05 klockan 12:00 -0500
Message: 2 Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:23:45 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 49617D41.5040205@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Good resources. Thanks for sending them. My reasoning for building that part of the Security Guide based on US Government documents and
not
documents from Universities or commercial sources has a simple explanation. Government computers HAVE to be secure. I've seen way
too
many universities and businesses run a half-way security mindset.
They
are too interested in the bottom line than a secure system even
though a
secure system will help the bottom line in the long run.
The only other industry that I would like to pull from is the
banking
industry. They are generally notorious for their secure systems
(I'm
talking about the larger banks). They could stand to loose billions
of
dollars if they are "broken into". Of course most of the banks make their documentation secret as to not tip off anyone with a possible documented flaw.
I agree that we should be looking at multiple sources and that will
come
in time. Please feel free to add information into the guide. I'll
be
happy to read any patches that you, or anyone else, has to offer to
the
guide. If you have any specific interests, please let me know!
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
I'm sorry if I came off a bit rude, it wasn't my intent. Also, I'm sorry for not being constructive, I'll try not and
e-mail during rush our in the future :-)
About a more wide spread flora of security references. My thought
was that the more known universities around the world
must have written kilometers of papers on Linux Security. Finding
freely available papers describing general security on
Linux was easier said than done. I found some references during a
quick scan this evening.
I guess it's a matter of trust. Of course the US Government and
the NSA has excellent and trustworthy security people,
and that information in this subject is collaborative.. but at
least I feel more secure seeing that it's not only
the US Government and secret service that approves and advocates
the security issues brought out in this security guide.
Universities: http://www.princeton.edu/~essweb/linux/linuxsecurity.html http://www.yale.edu/its/secure-computing/ http://www.yale.edu/its/security/sysadmin/server-guidelines.html http://www.yale.edu/its/security/network/unix.html http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/security/unix-box.html
Other: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-HOWTO/ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-Quickstart-HOWTO/
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/open-source-security.html
http://www.puschitz.com/SecuringLinux.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules
Vendors:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/Security_G...
I'll try and find some more / better references as soon as I have
some more free time.
//M
sn 2009-01-04 klockan 12:00 -0500 skrev Message: 8 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 09:44:55 -0500 From: "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 20090104144455.GB18821@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 09:07:16PM +1000, Murray McAllister
wrote:
On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Magnus Glantz mg@hacka.net
wrote:
> My 5 as an non US citizen. > > I do not feel comfortable with a guide that seems almost
completely
> ripped off published US military/government documents. I only looked at the English. I was not aware of the origins of
the
content.
I will be more careful in future.
Thanks! :-)
"Ripped off" seems unnecessarily harsh to me, and incorrectly
implies
that somehow the content was lifted without permission, when in
fact
the references in question are freely available to everyone (USA domestic or foreign). The principles embodied in most of those references are fairly universal and you'll find them echoed in
most
high-level infosec materials. In fact, some foreign governments
use
these references themselves.
The Security Guide continues to be a collaborative, participatory project, so anyone who is unhappy with the content -- or
completely
satisfied, too, for that matter -- is free to get involved! :-)
You
could start by providing equivalent or comparable non-US
references,
for example.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
The General Principles page was supposed to address what you have asked about. It is a general overview of security and includes basic items that people should understand.
That was written before the Red Hat information was pushed up so a lot of what is in the General Principles is also spread around the Red Hat information. I'm going to work on making sure all the information is accounted for and then clean up what is left. That is going to be a major portion of what needs to be merged. After that is completed I'll be able to really look at structure and such.
- - Eric
Magnus Glantz wrote:
Correctional double-post! I mailed using the wrong subject, this is the correct one.
What I feel is missing is perhaps not content, but structure or presentation of content.
This guide seems focused on administrators working in SME or large enterprises. I guess that would be natural, if the base of the guide is the RHEL Security Guide.. ( Thank you Karsten for pointing this out :-> )
As a new or a not very security interested Fedora user, I would say this guide is much too big and complex to make proper use of. It's like facing the worlds biggest all-you-can-eat buffet, when you to the best of your knowledge haven't tasted any of the food on display. And on second thought your too lazy and uninterested of food to try and find the essential good stuff.
What I'm looking for is perhaps a chapter for regular home users with focus on usability rather than security. People that like Fedora but who doesn't know or care much about security.
"Security for Home Users"
I would volunteer to write such a chapter.
//M
tis 2009-01-06 klockan 03:00 -0500 skrev
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:24:36 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 4962DD04.80709@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I agree, in part, with your overview. A completely secure system is
one
that is unplugged and that isn't exactly useful. I would dare say
that
you don't want the same level of security as I do or as anyone else might which is why it is important to give as much information as possible and let people pick and choose what they feel is important to their specific needs.
Case in point, admin A has a server in a cave that is physically
highly
protected. Disk encryption and securing single user mode might not be as important as securing the network connection. So that admin might only care about the VPN, SSH, IPTables, and related chapters and not
so
much on the LUKS Disk Encryption.
I feel that it is important to give admins and users as much
information
as possible so they can make an educated decision on mitigating their systems down to an acceptable level of risk. Users should know that their systems are NOT secure as soon as they install Fedora or any
other
operating system.
If we are missing something you think should be addressed please feel free to develop a chapter.
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
This e-mail is about security and user friendliness, and how I think
this guide perhaps may be modified into something better.
This may also be me misunderstanding the purpose of this guide. Be
aware.
I agree that Government Security Agencies and Banks has more to
loose than a lot of other people :-)
Last night I couldn't get to sleep, due to my big mouth, so I
thought a bit more about the security guide.
I guess this guide aims to the users of Fedora. This may be a huuge
misconception on my part, but, I though
regular home users are the main users of Fedora. So.. this guide
should perhaps to be focused on that kind of usage and
that kind of knowledge levels.
My experience, working with security in highly secure
government/telco environments is that security
and ease of use/user friendliness is two most important main counter
parts.
On one hand, it's "pretty easy" to make something extremely secure,
but extremely secure systems is a total drag to be in
- because they are difficult to access, use and communicate to and
from, due to all restrictions and security related administration.
I believe the standard Fedora user never would want such a system.
In a system like that security has compromised to much user friendliness for it to be fun.
If security isn't your definition of happy-happy joy-joy :-)
I had a thought that perhaps this guide should mainly not focus on
different things that makes a system secure as a bank.
Instead perhaps it should focus on covering techniques that allows
ones home computer to operate in a secure
_and_ user friendly manner.
Here's what I wrote on my phone last night, trying to kill demons of
guilt and shame spawned out of my nonconstructive mail yesterday.
I tried to sort them in order of positive impact on security weighed
against user friendliness.
- Keep your system up-to-date.
1.1) Perhaps advocacy that users should prefer "Yum installed
software", as it automatically will get updated via Yum.
- Keep backups of your data.
2.1) Some easy ways of backing up data. Burn on CD/DVD, put on
external storage, backup hard drive, etc. S/W recommendations.
- Running a firewall.
3.1) Using the shipped Fedora firewall setup tools, enabling the
firewall at install.
- Use SE-Linux
- Use common sense
5.1 Do not accept unknown stuff/software from unknown people. If a
stranger walked up to you in real life and offered you an unidentifiable object.. and you at the same time
constantly heard and read stories of people accepting
unidentifiable objects from strangers - finding out the object was a bomb / robotic miniature robber - YOU WOULD RUN AWAY!
- Do not run server software that you do not use (as web, mail,
ftp, nfs or even a ssh server (if it's a desktop))
- Advanced topics - Here one may cover more "user unfriendly"
stuff for the paranoid government spy user types :-)
6.1 Encryption of different kinds (files, file systems, e-mail, etc) 6.2 Advanced hardening techniques and tools. 6.3 Advanced auditing techniques and tools 6.4 Security policy and/or paranoid thinking
Some more links.
Organizations: http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/aia-handbook.pdf http://www.first.org/resources/guides/ http://www.sans.org/reading_room/
//M
mn 2009-01-05 klockan 12:00 -0500
Message: 2 Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:23:45 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 49617D41.5040205@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Good resources. Thanks for sending them. My reasoning for building that part of the Security Guide based on US Government documents and
not
documents from Universities or commercial sources has a simple explanation. Government computers HAVE to be secure. I've seen way
too
many universities and businesses run a half-way security mindset.
They
are too interested in the bottom line than a secure system even
though a
secure system will help the bottom line in the long run.
The only other industry that I would like to pull from is the
banking
industry. They are generally notorious for their secure systems
(I'm
talking about the larger banks). They could stand to loose billions
of
dollars if they are "broken into". Of course most of the banks make their documentation secret as to not tip off anyone with a possible documented flaw.
I agree that we should be looking at multiple sources and that will
come
in time. Please feel free to add information into the guide. I'll
be
happy to read any patches that you, or anyone else, has to offer to
the
guide. If you have any specific interests, please let me know!
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
I'm sorry if I came off a bit rude, it wasn't my intent. Also, I'm sorry for not being constructive, I'll try not and
e-mail during rush our in the future :-)
About a more wide spread flora of security references. My thought
was that the more known universities around the world
must have written kilometers of papers on Linux Security. Finding
freely available papers describing general security on
Linux was easier said than done. I found some references during a
quick scan this evening.
I guess it's a matter of trust. Of course the US Government and
the NSA has excellent and trustworthy security people,
and that information in this subject is collaborative.. but at
least I feel more secure seeing that it's not only
the US Government and secret service that approves and advocates
the security issues brought out in this security guide.
Universities: http://www.princeton.edu/~essweb/linux/linuxsecurity.html http://www.yale.edu/its/secure-computing/ http://www.yale.edu/its/security/sysadmin/server-guidelines.html http://www.yale.edu/its/security/network/unix.html http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/security/unix-box.html
Other: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-HOWTO/ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-Quickstart-HOWTO/
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/open-source-security.html
http://www.puschitz.com/SecuringLinux.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules
Vendors:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/Security_G...
I'll try and find some more / better references as soon as I have
some more free time.
//M
sn 2009-01-04 klockan 12:00 -0500 skrev Message: 8 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 09:44:55 -0500 From: "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 20090104144455.GB18821@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 09:07:16PM +1000, Murray McAllister
wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Magnus Glantz mg@hacka.net
wrote:
>> My 5 as an non US citizen. >> >> I do not feel comfortable with a guide that seems almost
completely
>> ripped off published US military/government documents. > I only looked at the English. I was not aware of the origins of
the
content. > I will be more careful in future. > > Thanks! :-) "Ripped off" seems unnecessarily harsh to me, and incorrectly
implies
that somehow the content was lifted without permission, when in
fact
the references in question are freely available to everyone (USA domestic or foreign). The principles embodied in most of those references are fairly universal and you'll find them echoed in
most
high-level infosec materials. In fact, some foreign governments
use
these references themselves.
The Security Guide continues to be a collaborative, participatory project, so anyone who is unhappy with the content -- or
completely
satisfied, too, for that matter -- is free to get involved! :-)
You
could start by providing equivalent or comparable non-US
references,
for example.
I've started writing a draft for such a chapter. I'll get back to you when I have something to present.
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Docs/Drafts/SecurityGuide/Securi...
//M
tis 2009-01-06 klockan 11:33 +0100 skrev Magnus Glantz:
What I feel is perhaps missing is not content, but structure or presentation of content.
This guide seems focused on administrators working in SME or large enterprises. I guess that would be natural, if the base of the guide is the RHEL Security Guide.. ( Thank you Karsten for pointing this out :-> )
As a new or a not very security interested Fedora user, I would say this guide is much too big and complex to make proper use of. It's like facing the worlds biggest all-you-can-eat buffet, when you to the best of your knowledge haven't tasted any of the food on display. And on second thought your too lazy and uninterested of food to try and find the essential good stuff.
What I'm looking for is perhaps a chapter for regular home users with focus on usability rather than security. People that like Fedora but who doesn't know or care much about security.
"Security for Home Users"
I would volunteer to write such a chapter.
//M
tis 2009-01-06 klockan 03:00 -0500 skrev
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:24:36 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 4962DD04.80709@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
I agree, in part, with your overview. A completely secure system is one that is unplugged and that isn't exactly useful. I would dare say that you don't want the same level of security as I do or as anyone else might which is why it is important to give as much information as possible and let people pick and choose what they feel is important to their specific needs.
Case in point, admin A has a server in a cave that is physically highly protected. Disk encryption and securing single user mode might not be as important as securing the network connection. So that admin might only care about the VPN, SSH, IPTables, and related chapters and not so much on the LUKS Disk Encryption.
I feel that it is important to give admins and users as much information as possible so they can make an educated decision on mitigating their systems down to an acceptable level of risk. Users should know that their systems are NOT secure as soon as they install Fedora or any other operating system.
If we are missing something you think should be addressed please feel free to develop a chapter.
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
This e-mail is about security and user friendliness, and how I think this guide perhaps may be modified into something better. This may also be me misunderstanding the purpose of this guide. Be aware.
I agree that Government Security Agencies and Banks has more to loose than a lot of other people :-)
Last night I couldn't get to sleep, due to my big mouth, so I thought a bit more about the security guide. I guess this guide aims to the users of Fedora. This may be a huuge misconception on my part, but, I though regular home users are the main users of Fedora. So.. this guide should perhaps to be focused on that kind of usage and that kind of knowledge levels.
My experience, working with security in highly secure government/telco environments is that security and ease of use/user friendliness is two most important main counter parts.
On one hand, it's "pretty easy" to make something extremely secure, but extremely secure systems is a total drag to be in
- because they are difficult to access, use and communicate to and from, due to all restrictions and security related administration.
I believe the standard Fedora user never would want such a system. In a system like that security has compromised to much user friendliness for it to be fun. If security isn't your definition of happy-happy joy-joy :-)
I had a thought that perhaps this guide should mainly not focus on different things that makes a system secure as a bank. Instead perhaps it should focus on covering techniques that allows ones home computer to operate in a secure _and_ user friendly manner.
Here's what I wrote on my phone last night, trying to kill demons of guilt and shame spawned out of my nonconstructive mail yesterday. I tried to sort them in order of positive impact on security weighed against user friendliness.
- Keep your system up-to-date.
1.1) Perhaps advocacy that users should prefer "Yum installed software", as it automatically will get updated via Yum. 2) Keep backups of your data. 2.1) Some easy ways of backing up data. Burn on CD/DVD, put on external storage, backup hard drive, etc. S/W recommendations. 3) Running a firewall. 3.1) Using the shipped Fedora firewall setup tools, enabling the firewall at install. 4) Use SE-Linux 5) Use common sense 5.1 Do not accept unknown stuff/software from unknown people. If a stranger walked up to you in real life and offered you an unidentifiable object.. and you at the same time constantly heard and read stories of people accepting unidentifiable objects from strangers - finding out the object was a bomb / robotic miniature robber - YOU WOULD RUN AWAY! 5) Do not run server software that you do not use (as web, mail, ftp, nfs or even a ssh server (if it's a desktop)) 6) Advanced topics - Here one may cover more "user unfriendly" stuff for the paranoid government spy user types :-) 6.1 Encryption of different kinds (files, file systems, e-mail, etc) 6.2 Advanced hardening techniques and tools. 6.3 Advanced auditing techniques and tools 6.4 Security policy and/or paranoid thinking
Some more links.
Organizations: http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/aia-handbook.pdf http://www.first.org/resources/guides/ http://www.sans.org/reading_room/
//M
mn 2009-01-05 klockan 12:00 -0500
Message: 2 Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:23:45 -0500 From: Eric Christensen eric@christensenplace.us Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 49617D41.5040205@christensenplace.us Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Good resources. Thanks for sending them. My reasoning for building that part of the Security Guide based on US Government documents and not documents from Universities or commercial sources has a simple explanation. Government computers HAVE to be secure. I've seen way too many universities and businesses run a half-way security mindset. They are too interested in the bottom line than a secure system even though a secure system will help the bottom line in the long run.
The only other industry that I would like to pull from is the banking industry. They are generally notorious for their secure systems (I'm talking about the larger banks). They could stand to loose billions of dollars if they are "broken into". Of course most of the banks make their documentation secret as to not tip off anyone with a possible documented flaw.
I agree that we should be looking at multiple sources and that will come in time. Please feel free to add information into the guide. I'll be happy to read any patches that you, or anyone else, has to offer to the guide. If you have any specific interests, please let me know!
Thanks, Eric Christensen E-Mail: sparks@fedoraproject.org GPG Key: BD0C14C1
Magnus Glantz wrote:
I'm sorry if I came off a bit rude, it wasn't my intent. Also, I'm sorry for not being constructive, I'll try not and e-mail during rush our in the future :-)
About a more wide spread flora of security references. My thought was that the more known universities around the world must have written kilometers of papers on Linux Security. Finding freely available papers describing general security on Linux was easier said than done. I found some references during a quick scan this evening.
I guess it's a matter of trust. Of course the US Government and the NSA has excellent and trustworthy security people, and that information in this subject is collaborative.. but at least I feel more secure seeing that it's not only the US Government and secret service that approves and advocates the security issues brought out in this security guide.
Universities: http://www.princeton.edu/~essweb/linux/linuxsecurity.html http://www.yale.edu/its/secure-computing/ http://www.yale.edu/its/security/sysadmin/server-guidelines.html http://www.yale.edu/its/security/network/unix.html http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/security/unix-box.html
Other: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-HOWTO/ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Security-Quickstart-HOWTO/ http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/open-source-security.html http://www.puschitz.com/SecuringLinux.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules
Vendors: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/Security_G...
I'll try and find some more / better references as soon as I have some more free time.
//M
sn 2009-01-04 klockan 12:00 -0500 skrev Message: 8 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 09:44:55 -0500 From: "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com Subject: Re: PATCH[1/1] Linux Security Guide To: fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 20090104144455.GB18821@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 09:07:16PM +1000, Murray McAllister wrote: > On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Magnus Glantz mg@hacka.net wrote: >> My 5 as an non US citizen. >> >> I do not feel comfortable with a guide that seems almost completely >> ripped off published US military/government documents. > I only looked at the English. I was not aware of the origins of the content. > I will be more careful in future. > > Thanks! :-) "Ripped off" seems unnecessarily harsh to me, and incorrectly implies that somehow the content was lifted without permission, when in fact the references in question are freely available to everyone (USA domestic or foreign). The principles embodied in most of those references are fairly universal and you'll find them echoed in most high-level infosec materials. In fact, some foreign governments use these references themselves.
The Security Guide continues to be a collaborative, participatory project, so anyone who is unhappy with the content -- or completely satisfied, too, for that matter -- is free to get involved! :-) You could start by providing equivalent or comparable non-US references, for example.
Message: 3 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:12:20 +0530 From: Rahul Sundaram sundaram@fedoraproject.org Subject: curl instead of wget To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 49618FAC.30400@fedoraproject.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi,
In documentation, wherever we are using wget, it is probably better to use curl instead since wget is not installed by default on the Live CD while curl is. Just a thought.
Rahul
Message: 4 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:01:54 +0200 From: Basil Mohamed Gohar abu_hurayrah@hidayahonline.org Subject: Re: curl instead of wget To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 1231131714.3714.7.camel@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 10:12 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi,
In documentation, wherever we are using wget, it is probably better to use curl instead since wget is not installed by default on the Live CD while curl is. Just a thought.
Rahul
I ran into this problem (missing wget) after installing from the F10 LiveCD, so I can relate. However, I've no experience with curl, and I must say, curl --help is somewhat intimidating. Is it as straightforward to use as wget, especially for someone that may be new (e.g., the majority of those using documentation on a new installation of Fedora)?
Basil Mohamed Gohar abu_hurayrah@hidayahonline.org www.basilgohar.com
Message: 5 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 23:04:11 -0600 From: Ian Weller ianweller@gmail.com Subject: Re: curl instead of wget To: For participants of the Documentation Project fedora-docs-list@redhat.com Message-ID: 20090105050411.GA3404@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 07:01:54AM +0200, Basil Mohamed Gohar wrote:
On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 10:12 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi,
In documentation, wherever we are using wget, it is probably better to use curl instead since wget is not installed by default on the Live CD while curl is. Just a thought.
Rahul
I ran into this problem (missing wget) after installing from the F10 LiveCD, so I can relate. However, I've no experience with curl, and I must say, curl --help is somewhat intimidating. Is it as straightforward to use as wget, especially for someone that may be new (e.g., the majority of those using documentation on a new installation of Fedora)?
Then shouldn't wget be installed by default?
Ian Weller ianweller@gmail.com http://ianweller.org GnuPG fingerprint: E51E 0517 7A92 70A2 4226 B050 87ED 7C97 EFA8 4A36 "Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet." ~ Douglas Adams
On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 02:50:49PM +0100, Magnus Glantz wrote:
I've started writing a draft for such a chapter. I'll get back to you when I have something to present.
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Docs/Drafts/SecurityGuide/Securi...
You probably want to move that to your personal drafting/sandbox space (User:Magnusg/Security_for_home_users.) We are not using nested page structures any longer, and are going to be renaming or archiving everything in various Docs.* spaces over the next week, including Docs/Drafts.
- Karsten
docs@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org