Airtight system security with Grsecurity
Seal It!
Security-conscious people dig a deep moat with crocodiles around their homes, hide their furniture in back rooms, and only let visitors into the bathroom if they know the secret password. Grsecurity follows a similarly extreme principle.
A small Linux patch collection called Grsecurity (for Greater Security) transforms the Linux kernel into an extremely untrusting fellow. Grsecurity unleashes a whole package of actions that preemptively block out attackers. Each user is initially treated as a principal source of danger. For example, Grsecurity only allows certain users to call dmesg; it locks the /proc directory, and it prevents access to /dev/kmem, /dev/mem, and /dev/port. Grsecurity also moves applications to a random location in memory (address space layout randomization), and it hides all the kernel threads.
Role-Play
The core of Grsecurity is Role-Based Access Control (RBAC for short), which sits on top of existing rights management. Grsecurity initially deprives all users of their access
rights, even hiding parts of the filesystem from them, and thus allows only the bare necessities. The administrator can then allow specific actions for individual users. Users with similar tasks can be grouped as “roles,” and the admin can then grant additional rights to these roles. For example, the webmaster group needs to start the SSH daemon, but the database administrator group does not.
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Tag Cloud
News
-
Munich Adopts Kolab
The Bavarian capital shuns Microsoft, Google, and other alternatives to implement an open-source groupware solution.
-
Canonical Announces Ubuntu Smartphones
Phone vendor partnerships bring Mark Shuttleworth's dream of Ubuntu on a phone a step closer to reality.
-
Piviti Seeks Funding
Donors will get to vote on new features for the free video editor.
-
Debian Tech Committee Votes for systemd
Debian project puts init out to pasture and says no to Ubuntu's Upstart.
-
The Mask: Scary New Face of Internet Intrusion
Ultra-sophisticated attack tool might have originated from a state-sponsored intelligence service.
-
Epoch 1.0 Released
New alternative for init comes with a small footprint and minimal configuration.
-
Wayland 1.4 Challenges X11
X marks the target for the next-generation windowing system.
-
Red Hat Adopts CentOS
Super-clone CentOS Linux gets beamed up to the mother ship.
-
W3C Promotes Media Source Extensions
HTML technology will enable new video editing and playback options.
-
Valve Announces SteamOS Beta
New Linux distro is optimzed for gaming.