Security Focus: Bastille Linux: A Walkthrough

“You use a “hardening program” to try to make your system as
secure as possible, from the ground up. Generally, you deactivate
unnecessary services and better the configurations of the ones you
leave enabled. This is wildly effective, as it can eliminate many
of the vulnerabilities that are common on Linux/Unix platforms.
This article presents a walkthrough of Bastille Linux, a
popular hardening program for Red Hat and Mandrake, available for
free from Jon Lasser, Pete Watkins, myself, and the rest of the
Bastille Linux project. This walkthrough won’t be the kind of
“paranoid” setup that I enjoy most, as that could remove too much
functionality for the average reader. Don’t worry – I’ll explain
what we’ll break in each setting, how we’ll break it, and how you
can fix it. But first, a shameless plug: I’ll let you know about
the cool features in the newest Bastille version, which we’ve just
released….”

“At the time of this writing, Bastille 1.1.0 has been released.
It might be a little rough around the edges, but if something
doesn’t work as planned, it can be easily undone or we can release
a quick fix. I’m recommending this version specifically because the
new architecture is much more featureful. Let’s download, install
and run Bastille on an x86-based Red Hat 6.x box. First, switch to
console mode. While Bastille uses a GUI-like (curses-based) Text
User Interface, it’s still a console tool that runs best on a
standard size 80×25 screen.”

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