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50 Ways to Avoid Getting Hacked in 2017

posted by on Monday January 09 2017, @10:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the belt-and-[suspenders|braces] dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Red Hat employee Daniel J. Walsh writes via OpenSource.com

When I was young, Paul Simon released his hit song, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Inspired by this song, I've collected 50 ways sysadmins and laypeople can avoid getting hacked:

"Make a new plan, Stan"
[...]
6. Run applications in the SELinux Sandbox whenever possible--it was a container before containers were cool. Also follow the development of Flatpack, which soon should be developing sandboxing capabilities.

7. Don't install or use Flash. Firefox no longer supports it, and hopefully most web servers are moving away from it.
[...]
"Just get yourself free"
[...]
19. [...] I don't do online banking on my phone--only on my Linux computer.
[...]
"Hop on the bus, Gus"

21. Run Linux on your systems. When I first hooked my father up with a computer system, I barely got home before his system was infested with viruses. I returned and installed Linux on his system and he has been running it ever since.
[...]
"And get yourself free"
[...]
50. Set up a special guest network for all those Christmas IoT devices your kids receive. I love my Amazon Echo and automated lights and power switches ("Alexa, turn on the Christmas Lights"), but each one of these is a Linux operating system [whose manufacturer's configuration] has questionable security.

Do you take exception with anything he suggests. (Being a Red Hat guy, he is enthusiastic about systemd.) Can you think of something he missed?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @08:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @08:19PM (#451599)

    These Linux installs are set up such that the daily user acct has no sudo perms.

    Even the default install in *n?x requires the user to explicitly grant permission for a download/install to be runnable.
    This makes the notion of a drive-by infection quite foreign to users of Linux and its kin.

    In contrast, any app that hits a Windoze system is automatically executable.
    (I understand that MICROS~1 **finally** made auto-execute **not** the default for anything it found on plugged-in/inserted media.)
    N.B. Outside of extremely-locked-down kiosks, it's been a long time since I've used M$'s dreck, so perhaps something has changed radically in the permissions/security arena and I am unaware of that.

    firejail

    More folks need to be aware if that paradigm.
    Especially the folks who support the will-click-on-anything types.

    I gave them a LiveCD

    One of the coolest things ever devised.

    I'm looking at starting a small side-business doing Linux migrations

    Godspeed to you.

    .
    On my system (small-ish onscreen windows and large-ish fonts), the hard linebreaks that you have (seemingly randomly) inserted into sentences within your comment look odd.
    If you hit Control+PlusSign, a couple of times, you may see your stuff as some other folks do.

    The -lack- of -paragraph- breaks (double carriage returns) is also odd.
    For easier reading, the length of your comment deserves at least 2 of those IMO.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]