Security: PuppyLinux

Revision [29050]

This is an old revision of security made by coolpup on 2013-10-05 15:52:32.

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Security includes protection from data loss, data theft and data corruption.

Security Precautions

Adobe Flash Player may pose too high a risk for some users - either disable it or configure the Web browser to restrict its use

never open e-mail attachments from strangers; delete them instead

renew the default system password using the passwd utility

activate the software firewall (discussion): Menu > Setup > Linux-Firewall Wizard

use the latest available versions of file-system tools: bzip2, dosfstools, e2fsprogs, grep, gzip, ntfs3g, tar, xz

use the latest available versions of cryptography libraries: [libgcrypt]], openssl

use the latest available version of Web browsers: SeaMonkey, Firefox

use the latest available version of FlashPlayer Adobe Flash Player (if it is used)

use a PuppyVersion with a recent Linux kernel version:
```
uname -a
```

use encryption

SecureErase

always have a minimum of three identical versions of valuable or important files on physically separate media

disable JavaScript within the Web browser (with a subsequent loss in Web-page functionality)

perform virus detection: ClamAV

References

Potential Flash point

http://www.builderau.com.au/program/linux

Security forum thread

Linux Security

Security History

Linux security Howto

10 tips

NSA in Windows

Top Cyber Security Risks

Live Linux CD for security

Password protect GRUB

group51.org

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=405903

http://sectools.org/index.html

http://www.virustotal.com/

http://www.cryptoheaven.com/

http://epic.org/privacy/tools.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13880_3-20010350-68.html?tag=mncol;mlt_related

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=41146

Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf from the Computer Crime Investigation Unit told the hearing that he uses two rules to protect himself from cyber-criminals when banking online. The first rule, he said, was to never click on hyperlinks to the banking site and the second was to avoid Microsoft Windows: 'If you are using the internet for a commercial transaction, use a Linux boot up disk - such as Ubuntu or some of the other flavours. Puppy Linux is a nice small distribution that boots up fairly quickly. It gives you an operating system which is perfectly clean and operates only in the memory of the computer and is a perfectly safe way of doing Internet banking'. Source

Security set-up for Puppy 2.16
1 Open console type 'passwd'. enter your new password twice.

2 Run 'lock' on desktop and enter password from step 1

*you may want to select 'blank' from the config to save on processor usage

3 edit /etc/inittab to look like this:

::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
tty1::respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
tty2::respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/reboot

*this keeps someone from killing lock with ctrl+alt+backspace and logging back in automatically and also gives the option on bootup to enter 'root' and 'password'.

Create Password
Boot Puppy

ctrl+alt+F2 (because my eyes are going and this is easier to read than in a console)

"
puppypc login :root
Password : well known and published password
#passwd
Changing password for root
New password : a new and unpublished password
Retype password : a new and unpublished password
Password for root changed by root
"

ctrl+alt+F3 (back to GUI)(F4 for some puppies)

Open terminal and type: passwd

Create a user to run applications.

Open terminal and type: cd / && mkdir home

Think of your new user name and then type in console: cd /home && mkdir YourNickHere

Now copy these files to /home/YourNickHere
.bashrc, .fonts.cache-1, .gtkrc-2.0, .gtkrc.mine, .Xdefaults, .Xresources

Open terminal and type: adduser YourNickHere

Run applications as YourNickHere by typing su -c application YourNickHere
example: su -c gaim YourNickHere

Make applications run as YourNickHere by default:

Edit application launchers to resemble this, su -c application YourNickHere

Puppy has a personal wiki called DidiWiki, with its own inbuilt HTTP server, so is accessed from a web browser, either locally or over a network/Internet. What we do in this case is run DidiWiki as user "spot". We can run an individual server application as a restricted non-root user, even though you yourself are still logged in as root.