Network security is becoming more and more important as people spend more and more time connected. Compromising network security is often much easier than compromising physical or local, and is much more common.
There are a number of good tools to assist with network security, and more and more of them are shipping with Linux distributions.
One of the most common ways intruders gain access to more systems on your network is by employing a packet sniffer on a already compromised host. This "sniffer" just listens on the Ethernet port for things like "password" and "login" and "su" in the packet stream and then logs the traffic after that. This way, attackers gain passwords for systems they are not even attempting to break into. Clear-text passwords are very vulnerable to this attack.
EXAMPLE: host A has been compromised. Attacker installs a
sniffer. Sniffer picks up admin logging into host B from Host C. It
gets the admin's personal password as they login to B. Then, the admin
does a su to fix a problem. They now have the root password for Host
B. Later the admin lets someone telnet from his account to host Z on
another site. Now the attacker has a password/login on host Z.
In this day and age, the attacker doesn't even need to compromise a system to do this: they could also bring a laptop or pc into a building and tap into your net.
Using ssh or other encrypted password methods thwarts this
attack. Things like APOP for POP accounts also prevents this
attack. (Normal POP logins are very vulnerable to this, as is anything
that sends clear-text passwords over the network.)
Before you put your Linux system on ANY network the first thing to look at is what services you need to offer. Services that you do not need to offer should be disabled so that you have one less thing to worry about and attackers have one less place to look for a hole.
There are a number of ways to disable services under Linux. You can
look at your /etc/inetd.conf file and see what services are being
offered by your inetd. Disable any that you do not need by commenting
them out (# at the beginning of the line), and then sending your inetd
process a SIGHUP.
You can also remove (or comment out) services in your /etc/services
file. This will mean that local clients will also be unable to find
the service (i.e., if you remove ftp, and try and ftp to a remote site
from that machine it will fail with an "unknown service" message). It's
usually not worth the trouble to remove services, since it provides no
additional security. If a local person wanted to use ftp even though
you had commented it out, they would make their own client that use
the common FTP port and would still work fine.
Some of the services you might want to leave enabled are:
ftptelnet (or ssh)pop-3 or imapidentd
If you know you are not going to use some particular package, you can
also delete it entirely. rpm -e packagename under
the Red Hat distribution will erase an entire package. Under debian
dpkg --remove does the same thing.
Additionally, you really want to disable the rsh/rlogin/rcp utilities,
including login (used by rlogin), shell (used by rcp), and exec (used
by rsh) from being started in /etc/inetd.conf. These protocols are
extremely insecure and have been the cause of exploits in the past.
You should check your /etc/rc.d/rcN.d, (where N is your systems run
level) and see if any of the servers started in that directory are not
needed. The files in /etc/rc.d/rcN.d are actually symbolic links to
the directory /etc/rc.d/init.d. Renaming the files in the init.d
directory has the effect of disabling all the symbolic links in
/etc/rc.d/rcN.d. If you only wish to disable a service for a
particular run level, rename the appropriate file by replacing
the upper-case S
with a lower-case
s, like this:
root# cd /etc/rc6.d
root# mv S45dhcpd s45dhcpd
If you have BSD style rc files, you will want to check /etc/rc* for
programs you don't need.
Most Linux distributions ship with tcp_wrappers "wrapping" all your
TCP services. A tcp_wrapper (tcpd) is invoked from inetd instead of
the real server. tcpd then checks the host that is requesting the
service, and either executes the real server, or denies access from that
host. tcpd allows you to restrict access to your TCP services. You
should make a /etc/hosts.allow and add in only those hosts that need
to have access to your machine's services.
If you are a home dialup user, we suggest you deny ALL. tcpd also logs
failed attempts to access services, so this can give alert you if
you are under attack. If you add new services, you should be sure to
configure them to use tcp_wrappers if they are TCP based. For example, a normal
dial-up user can prevent outsiders from connecting to his machine,
yet still have the ability to retrieve mail, and make network
connections to the Internet. To do this, you might add the following
to your /etc/hosts.allow:
ALL: 127.
And of course /etc/hosts.deny would contain:
ALL: ALL
which will prevent external connections to your machine, yet still allow you from the inside to connect to servers on the Internet.
Keeping up-to-date DNS information about all hosts on your network can help to increase security. If an unauthorized host becomes connected to your network, you can recognize it by its lack of a DNS entry. Many services can be configured to not accept connections from hosts that do not have valid DNS entries.
identd
identd is a small program that typically runs out of your
inetd server. It keeps track of what user is running what TCP
service, and then reports this to whoever requests it.
Many people misunderstand the usefulness of identd, and so disable it
or block all off site requests for it. identd is not there to help out
remote sites. There is no way of knowing if the data you get from the
remote identd is correct or not. There is no authentication in identd
requests.
Why would you want to run it then? Because it helps you out, and is
another data-point in tracking. If your identd is un compromised, then
you know it's telling remote sites the user-name or uid of people using
TCP services. If the admin at a remote site comes back to you and
tells you user so-and-so was trying to hack into their site, you can
easily take action against that user. If you are not running identd,
you will have to look at lots and lots of logs, figure out who was on
at the time, and in general take a lot more time to track down the
user.
The identd that ships with most distributions is more configurable
than many people think. You can disable it for specific users
(they can make a .noident file), you can log all
identd requests (We recommend it), you can even have identd
return a uid instead of a user name or even NO-USER.
There are a number of different software packages out there that do port and service based scanning of machines or networks. SATAN, ISS, SAINT, and Nessus are some of the more well-known ones. This software connects to the target machine (or all the target machines on a network) on all the ports they can, and try to determine what service is running there. Based on this information, you can tell if the machine is vulnerable to a specific exploit on that server.
SATAN (Security Administrator's Tool for Analyzing Networks) is a port scanner with a web interface. It can be configured to do light, medium, or strong checks on a machine or a network of machines. It's a good idea to get SATAN and scan your machine or network, and fix the problems it finds. Make sure you get the copy of SATAN from metalab or a reputable FTP or web site. There was a Trojan copy of SATAN that was distributed out on the net. http://www.trouble.org/~zen/satan/satan.html. Note that SATAN has not been updated in quite a while, and some of the other tools below might do a better job.
ISS (Internet Security Scanner) is another port-based scanner. It is faster than Satan, and thus might be better for large networks. However, SATAN tends to provide more information.
Abacus is a suite of tools to provide host based security and intrusion detection. look at it's home page on the web for more information. http://www.psionic.com/abacus/
SAINT is a updated version of SATAN. It is web based and has many more up to date tests than SATAN. You can find out more about it at: http://www.wwdsi.com/~saint
Nessus is a free security scanner. It has a GTK graphical interface for ease of use. It is also designed with a very nice plugin setup for new port scanning tests. For more information, take a look at: http://www.nessus.org
There are some tools designed to alert you to probes by SATAN and ISS and other scanning software. However liberally use tcp_wrappers, and make sure to look over your log files regularly, you should be able to notice such probes. Even on the lowest setting, SATAN still leaves traces in the logs on a stock Red Hat system.
There are also "stealth" port scanners. A packet with the TCP ACK bit set (as is done with established connections) will likely get through a packet-filtering firewall. The returned RST packet from a port that _had no established session_ can be taken as proof of life on that port. I don't think TCP wrappers will detect this.
sendmail, qmail and MTA's
One of the most important services you can provide is a mail server. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most vulnerable to attack, simply due to the number of tasks it must perform and the privileges it typically needs.
If you are using sendmail it is very important to keep up on current
versions. sendmail has a long long history of security
exploits. Always make sure you are running the most recent version from
http://www.sendmail.org.
If you are tired of upgrading your version of sendmail every week, you
might consider switching over to qmail. qmail was designed with
security in mind from the ground up. It's fast, stable, and secure.
http://www.qmail.org
A "Denial of service" (DoS) attack is one where the attacker tries to make some resource too busy to answer legitimate requests, or to deny legitimate users access to your machine.
Denial of service attacks have increased greatly in recent years. Some of the more popular and recent ones are listed below. Note that new ones show up all the time, so this is just a few examples. Read the Linux security lists and the bugtraq list and archives for more current information.
If you are ever under a ping flood attack, use a tool like tcpdump to
determine where the packets are coming from (or appear to be coming
from), then contact your provider with this information. Ping floods
can most easily be stopped at the router level or by using a firewall.
NFS is a very widely-used file sharing protocol. It allows servers
running nfsd and mountd to "export" entire filesystems to other
machines using NFS filesystem support built in to their kernels (or some
other client support if they are not Linux machines). mountd keeps
track of mounted filesystems in /etc/mtab, and can display them with
showmount.
Many sites use NFS to serve home directories to users, so that no matter what machine in the cluster they login to, they will have all their home files.
There is some small amount of security allowed in exporting
filesystems. You can make your nfsd map the remote root user (uid=0)
to the nobody user, denying them total access to the files
exported. However, since individual users have access to their own (or
at least the same uid) files, the remote root user can login or su to
their account and have total access to their files. This is only a
small hindrance to an attacker that has access to mount your remote
filesystems.
If you must use NFS, make sure you export to only those machines that you really need to. Never export your entire root directory; export only directories you need to export.
See the NFS HOWTO for more information on NFS: NFS HOWTO
Network Information service (formerly YP) is a means of distributing
information to a group of machines. The NIS master holds the
information tables and converts them into NIS map files. These maps
are then served over the network, allowing NIS client machines to get
login, password, home directory and shell information (all the
information in a standard /etc/passwd file). This allows users to
change their password once and have it take effect on all the machines
in the NIS domain.
NIS is not at all secure. It was never meant to be. It was meant to be handy and useful. Anyone that can guess the name of your NIS domain (anywhere on the net) can get a copy of your passwd file, and use "crack" and "John the Ripper" against your users' passwords. Also, it is possible to spoof NIS and do all sorts of nasty tricks. If you must use NIS, make sure you are aware of the dangers.
There is a much more secure replacement for NIS, called NIS+. Check out the NIS HOWTO for more information: http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/NIS-HOWTO.html
Firewalls are a means of controlling what information is allowed into and out of your local network. Typically the firewall host is connected to the Internet and your local LAN, and the only access from your LAN to the Internet is through the firewall. This way the firewall can control what passes back and forth from the Internet and your lan.
There are a number of types of firewalls and methods of setting them up. Linux
machines make pretty good firewalls. Firewall code can be
built right into 2.0 and higher kernels. The ipfwadm or
ipchains (in 2.2) user-space tools
allows you to change, on the fly, the types of network traffic you allow.
You can also log particular types of network traffic.
Firewalls are a very useful and important technique in securing your
network. But never think that because you have a firewall, you don't
need to secure the machines behind it. This is a fatal mistake. Check
out the very good Firewall-HOWTO at your latest metalab archive for
more information on firewalls and Linux.
http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/Firewall-HOWTO.html
More information can also be found in the IP-Masquerade mini-howto: http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/mini/IP-Masquerade.html
More information on ipfwadm (The tool that lets you change settings on
your firewall, can be found at it's home page:
http://www.xos.nl/linux/ipfwadm/
VPN's are a way to establish a "virtual" network on top of some already existing network. This virtual network often is encrypted and passes traffic only to and from some known entities that have joined the network. VPN's are often used to connect someone working at home over the public internet to a internal company network by using a encrypted virtual network.
If you are running a linux masquerading firewall and need to pass MS PPTP (Microsoft's VPN point to point product) packets, there is a linux kernel patch out to do just that. See: ip-masq-vpn.
There are several linux VPN solutions available: