Linux Solutions

While on the surface it might sound a little bizarre, Linux actually working with their main competitor Microsoft, is there an ulterior motive behind the recent overtures from the Linux Foundation?

Jim Zemlin, who is currently the head of the Linux Foundation, recently held out the hand of friendship to the Foundation’s arch enemy and most vocal critic, Microsoft in a move which has got many people wondering what is happening. The whole ethos of Linux is total at odds with the Microsoft way of business, the creation of wealth and profit and the ongoing protection of their customer base. Linux on the other hand is open source code and as such is open to use by each an every programmer in the world.

However, on closer inspection it seems that Microsoft recently filed a number of claims with the courts with regards to patents which they believe they hold on parts of the Linux code. While Microsoft has not as yet released the identity of the code in question, they seem to be trying to bully the Foundation into some kind of agreement. In direct response to this threat, which Linux are confident is unfounded, the Foundation seem more than willing to discuss the matter further with Microsoft, forcing their hand in public.

While Microsoft has yet to respond to this invitation it seems highly unlikely that they will be prepared to let the Linux Foundation anywhere near their customers, office or contacts. Whether Linux were looking to enter the Microsoft Group via the back door or secretly see some kind of legal basis to the argument is unsure, but it has got the industry talking.

In the world of computing and programming especially, patent and copyright law cases come and go, with Linux often an “easy target” for many. While the Foundation has actually had their day in court as a consequence of action by other parties, to date nothing has ever been proved and they have won every action ever taken against them.

Linux Operating System is known as most secure and most popular OS all around and very much stable too. Data Security in Linux Server could be maintained by making an effective data security strategy. Corporate data security could be implemented by applying proper data security strategy for Linux Server.

There are many Linux distributions are there and most popular among them are Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu and SuSE etc. This article contains basics of security for Linux Red Hat 9.

We assume that you have installed Linux OS with x11(GUI for Red Hat). Graphical User Interface should not be enabled for to get best level security.
You can use find / -name filename command to locate or find a file and pico or vi to edit a file.
Securing You Linux Box:

First of all you need to secure your Linux box by taking some actions to prevent unauthorized users access. It is necessary to secure Linux box because server monitoring could be viewed using Linux box.
Change Root Password:
Changing root password within 30 days is a good idea and you should use highest security level terms as Linux root password. To reset Linux root password passwd command is used while logged in as root.

One thing is very dangerous with respect to security that to be able to run an application as different user like with suid( set user ID) command an unauthorized user can run application same like privileged user and can access and edit /etc/passwd file. You should find files which are using suid and file with an s in permission column runs with suid.

# ls -alF `find / -perm -4000` > /root/suid.txt

You may get the following result on server of this command in /root/suid.txt.

-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 60104 Feb 1 2007 /bin/mount*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 35192 Feb 18 2007 /bin/ping*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 19116 Feb 8 2007 /bin/su*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 30664 Feb 1 2007 /bin/umount*
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root root 120264 Feb 9 2007 /sbin/pwdb_chkpwd*
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root root 16992 Feb 9 2007 /sbin/unix_chkpwd*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 37528 Dec 17 2007 /usr/bin/at*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 34296 Apr 27 2007 /usr/bin/chage*
-rws–x–x 1 root root 12072 Feb 1 2007 /usr/bin/chfn*
-rws–x–x 1 root root 11496 Feb 1 2007 /usr/bin/chsh*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 21080 Feb 15 2007 /usr/bin/crontab*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 36100 Mar 27 2007 /usr/bin/gpasswd*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 19927 Feb 17 2007 /usr/bin/lppasswd*
-rws–x–x 1 root root 4764 Feb 1 2007 /usr/bin/newgrp*
-r-s–x–x 1 root root 15104 Mar 13 2007 /usr/bin/passwd*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 14588 Jul 24 2006 /usr/bin/rcp*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 10940 Jul 24 2006 /usr/bin/rlogin*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 7932 Jul 24 2006 /usr/bin/rsh*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 219932 Feb 4 2007 /usr/bin/ssh*
—s–x–x 1 root root 84680 Feb 18 2007 /usr/bin/sudo*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 32673 Apr 18 2007 /usr/sbin/ping6*
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root root 451280 Feb 8 2007 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 20140 Mar 14 2007 /usr/sbin/traceroute*
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 13994 Feb 18 2007 /usr/sbin/traceroute6*
-rws–x–x 1 root root 22388 Feb 15 2007 /usr/sbin/userhelper*

-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 17461 Feb 19 2007 /usr/sbin/usernetctl*

Some Linux System Administrator recommend disabling ping and traceroute services which is not necessary. However, you should disable the following
/usr/bin/chage, /usr/bin/chfn, /usr/bins/chsh, /bin/mount,
/bin/umount, /usr/bin/gpasswd, /usr/sbin/usernetctl, /usr/sbin/traceroute, /usr/sbin/traceroute6, /usr/bin/newgrp, /usr/sbin/ping6, and /bin/ping.

When you have disabled suid then files can be executed only by owner. To disable suid use the following command.

#chmod 111 /path/to/file
#chattr +I /path/to/file