Course Length:

5 Days

Course Description:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has gained considerable momentum as the operating system of choice for deploying network services such as web, ftp, email, and file sharing. Red Hat's RHCE curriculum provides training in deploying these services and on the essential elements of securing them.

Who Should Attend:

The audience for this course includes system administrators, consultants, and other IT professionals responsible for the planning, implementation, and maintenance of network servers. While the emphasis is on running these services on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and the content and labs will assume its use, system administrators and others using proprietary forms of Unix may also find many elements of this course relevant.

Benefits of Attendance:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Master basic service security.
• Understand cryptography.
• Log system activity.
• Secure BIND and DNS.
• Improve NFS security.
• Manage FTP access.

Prerequisites:

RH253, RH300, or RHCE certification or equivalent work experience is required for this course. Course participants should already know the essential elements of how to configure the services covered, as this course will be focusing on more advanced topics from the outset.

Course Outline:

• The Threat Model and Protection Methods
  1. Internet threat model and the attacker's plan
  2. System security and service availability
  3. An overview of protection mechanisms
• Basic Service Security
  1. SELinux
  2. Host-based access control
  3. Firewalls using Netfilter and iptables
  4. TCP wrappers
  5. xinetd and service limits
• Cryptography
  1. Overview of cryptographic techniques
  2. Management of SSL certificates
  3. Using GnuPG
• Logging and NTP
  1. Time synchronization with NTP
  2. Logging: syslog and its weaknesses
  3. Protecting log servers
• BIND and DNS Security
  1. BIND vulnerabilities
  2. DNS Security: attacks on DNS
  3. Access control lists
  4. Transaction signatures
  5. Restricting zone transfers and recursive queries
  6. DNS Topologies
  7. Bogus servers and blackholes
  8. Views
  9. Monitoring and logging
  10. Dynamic DNS security
• Network Authentication: RPC, NIS, and Kerberos
  1. Vulnerabilities
  2. Network-managed users and account management
  3. RPC and NIS security issues
  4. Improving NIS security
  5. Using Kerberos authentication
  6. Debugging Kerberized Services
  7. Kerberos Cross-Realm Trust
  8. Kerberos Encryption
• Network File System
  1. Overview of NFS versions 2, 3, and 4
  2. Security in NFS versions 2 and 3
  3. Improvements in security in NFS4
  4. Troubleshooting NFS4
  5. Client-side mount options
• OpenSSH
  1. Vulnerabilities
  2. Server configuration and the SSH protocols
  3. Authentication and access control
  4. Client-side security
  5. Protecting private keys
  6. Port-forwarding and X11-forwarding issues
• Electronic Mail with Sendmail
  1. Vulnerabilities
  2. Server topologies
  3. Email encryption
  4. Access control and STARTTLS
  5. Anti-spam mechanisms
• Postfix
  1. Vulnerabilities
  2. Security and Postfix design
  3. Configuring SASL/TLS
• FTP
  1. Vulnerabilities
  2. The FTP protocol and FTP servers
  3. Logging
  4. Anonymous FTP
  5. Access control
• Apache security
  1. Vulnerabilities
  2. Access control
  3. Authentication: files, passwords, Kerberos
  4. Security implications of common configuration options
  5. CGI security
  6. Server side includes
  7. suEXEC
• Intrusion Detection and Recovery
  1. Intrusion risks
  2. Security policy
  3. Detecting possible intrusions
  4. Monitoring network traffic and open ports
  5. Detecting modified files
  6. Investigating and verifying detected intrusions
  7. Recovering from, reporting, and documenting intrusions