Securing Linux

Presented by: Darren Mobley

Introduction

Hello, My name is Darren Have been supporting and developing cPanel for over 4 years. We'll be covering some steps to take to help protect servers from common attacks

Main Topics

Local security measures Protecting against common remote attacks What to do after an attack, cleanup Having and following a Security Policy

Local Attacks: Passwords

Crack your own users' passwords using JTR, crack Preferably run the crackers on a dedicated machine, not the server, due to load Any passwords that crack in under a few hours need to have shell access removed until the password can be changed. This should be written into TOS/AUP which is signed by the client.

Local Attacks: xinetd

Turning off unneeded daemons in xinetd

Check /etc/xinetd.conf Check /etc/xinetd.d/*

Common ones are cupsd (printing daemon) nfs/statd (unless using nfs mounted FS)

Local Attacks: Running Processes

Often script kiddies will launch backdoor scripts on the server using vulnerable php scripts Bad clients or hacked accounts will be used to launch IRC bots / bouncers

`ps auxww` `lsof -n`

Try to find processes hidden by a rootkit, such as SuckIt

mpid=`sysctl kernel.pid_max | cut -d " " -f 3`; for i in `seq 1 $mpid`; do test -f /proc/$i/cmdline && (echo -n "[$i] "; strings /proc/$i/cmdline; echo); done

Local Attacks: Login Access

Setting login access definitions

/etc/login.defs

Expire passwords after PASS_MAX_DAYS Set minimum password length to PASS_MIN_LEN Set number of days before pass expires to send reminder with PASS_WARN_AGE There are more options that are well documented in the default file Suggest to use firewall instead as it will protect all services, not just the ones written to obey the rules set in the hosts.* files

/etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny

Local Attacks: Shell limits

Set in /etc/security/limits.conf

Protect against fork bombs and out of control applications, scripts Will want to start out very lax, make stricter after testing with current settings; as need arises Example settings:

@users @users @users @users @users @users nobody

hard hard hard soft hard hard

nofile 500 cpu 30 nproc 150 nproc 100 rss 50000 maxlogins 3 nofile 16384

Local Attacks: Permissions

Find all world writable files and directories

find / \( -perm -a+w \) ! -type l >> world_writable.txt reveals target locations an attacker can use to store their files fixing bad perms breaks some poorly written php/cgi scripts leave (/var)/tmp alone, secure it with /scripts/securetmp find / \( -perm -4000 -o -perm -2000 \) -exec ls -ldb {} \; >> suid_files.txt Many files need these elevated permissions, do not fix without knowing exactly how it will affect the system. sudo, su, mount, traceroute, etc find / -nouser -o -nogroup

Find all setuid/gid files

Find all files with no owner/group

Local Attacks: Mount options

Use nosuid option when mounting /tmp and /home Consider noexec on /tmp after cPanel installation Use /scripts/securetmp to have /tmp be mounted nosuid,noexec on a temporary file

Local Attacks: IDS / Basic Forensics

Tripwire

Monitors checksums of files, reports when they have changed. A good way of helping ensure files are not replaced by rootkits/trojans/etc. Commercial : http://www.tripwire.com OSS Branch: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripwire http://www.chkrootkit.org Scans system for common signs of rootkits, backdoors, lkm, etc. http://www.rootkit.nl/projects/rootkit_hunter.html Same as chkrootkit http://www.logwatch.org Scans through logs and emails a daily report of system activity

Chkrootkit

Rkhunter

Logwatch

Remote Attacks: Bound ports

Find out what programs are listening on what ports

netstat -nap

Backdoor scripts/irc apps are usually launched from a writable directory, /tmp or in the user's ~ directory. Most will bind to a port and wait for connections, some will call home in an attempt to get around P/NAT firewalling

Remote Attacks: /proc tunables

tcp syn cookies

sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies=1

or Helps protect against SYN flood DoS attacks

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies

echo 999999 > / proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh/eth0/locktime

Exchange eth0 with primary outgoing ethernet device Increases the time that ARP caches will expire

Not needed if setting the ARP cache statically

Remote Attacks: ARP Poisoning

Tools like ettercap make ARP cache poisoning trivial.

Enables MITM attacks Allows easy hijacking of SSL and SSH sessions, along with any other sort of connections

Many datacenters are vulnerable to this due to management difficulties of setting static routes

Set your own static route, assuming that the server doesn't get moved often

arp -s 192.168.1.1 00:0A:EB:D8:35:46

192.168.1.1 = default gateway 00:0A:EB:D8:35:46 = NIC's MAC address

Remote Attacks: Firewalling

ipchains/iptables

Suggest using APF or similar if not familiar with iptables for ease of use and quality protection

Be sure to enable all the ports cPanel requires:

http://faq.cpanel.net/show.cgi?qa=108499296901804

Always be sure to leave yourself a way back in

set crontab to disable firewall every 5-10 minutes while testing new rules have serial console over ip available call the DC and hope they don't charge extra to have a tech flush the rules

Remote Attacks: Apache

Most all attacks are against poorly coded webbased applications

php makes poor programming easy to pull off, most target scripts are written in php Backdoors, shell imitation scripts, etc can be launched to give full shell access to the server, even if the account has no shell access itself will stop some scripts from accessing other user accounts

Enable openbase_dir protection in WHM

Remote Attacks: Apache

Enable suexec for perl scripts, phpsuexec for php scripts

Allows tracking of scripts and forces them to run as the user of the account, rather that the nobody user Enforces sane permissions and environment, such as not running if world writable, or in a world writable directory Greatly helps when tracking exploited scripts used by spammers Keeps users from doing stuff like

system("killall -11 httpd");

Remote Attacks: Apache

Enable safe_mode for php

Edit the relevant php.ini

php -i |grep php.ini

safe_mode = On Note that safe_mode is removed from php6 and later

Edit disable_functions for php

Disable

enable_dl = Off

disables loading modules from inside the script

Remote Attacks: Apache

Considerations

With php_suexec enabled, users can put a php.ini in the script directory and override all settings, including safe_mode and disable_functions to run commands Almost all scripting languages allow access to the filesystem as part of the language, malicious use of these functions is the real problem

Remote Attacks: Apache

Using mod_security

Can be installed in WHM in the addons section Main website at http://www.modsecurity.org/ Good ruleset to use:

http://www.hostmerit.com/modsec.user.conf

Allows realtime analysis of web requests and can block malicious requests One of the more powerful apache modules, especially where security is concerned

General Policy

Give users a jailshell rather than a fullfledged shell Have clients use sftp, scp, smtp+ssl, pop+ssl, https://site.tld/cpanel whenever possible to avoid plain text passwords Use SSHv2 only, as SSHv1 is decryptable on the fly. Change root/admin passwords frequently using a mix of upper/lowercase letters, numbers and symbols Constantly monitor logs

Stay Informed

Join mailing lists to find out about new attacks when the information is first available

http://www.securityfocus.com http://www.securityfocus.com/archive

Bugtraq
Classic List

Incidents

Good for knowing about real security breeches in the wild

Questions ? Discussion ?

I just might know, or have an opinion; ask away!