“Hang your server out in e-commerce land for any length of time
and the odds are that, sooner or later, someone will climb over or
tunnel under your firewall. That type of perimeter defense is
almost as effective as birth control and, if breached, the result
is almost as traumatic and expensive. Preventing hackers from
hijacking your server usually requires more than just a barrier.
According to Argus Systems, it requires PitBull LX.”
“PitBull LX is the Linux version of Argus’s Solaris- and
AIX-based security software. Unlike firewalls that are primarily
meant to prevent intrusion into your server but can allow access
once they’ve been circumvented, PitBull LX’s job is to deny someone
access, no matter how they’ve intruded, even if they’re logged in
over the network as a super user. It does this by allowing you to
create segregated access domains that isolate subsystems and
processes from each other. You can then assign similar–or
different–access rules to any or all of the domains you’ve
created. If an intruder is detected, PitBull LX traps the intruder
in the affected domain, leaving the remainder of your server
otherwise untouched.”
“PitBull LX is not actually an application. It becomes part of
the Linux kernel and adds its commands. Don’t worry about losing a
weekend to patching and assembling; Argus provides an install
script file on the CD-ROM that does most of the heavy work. Argus
does note, however, that if you later need to build a custom
kernel, you should also install the provided argus_kernel-source,
which includes a prepatched Linux source tree and the binary
modules needed to do a custom build.”