Introduction

Malicious attacks against computers are on the rise. Although fewer viruses have been written to attack GNU/Linux systems than Windows systems, GNU/Linux viruses do exist. Furthermore, the amount of other types of malware that can infect a computer running Linux — as well as the sheer number of attacks — are growing. Recently Wirenet.1 attacked computers running Linux and Mac OS X. The malware stole passwords and other information stored in the computer’s Internet browser, email client, and instant messaging tool.

How myths about security grow When mischief was the focus for malicious hackers, Windows systems were the primary target because they were easy to use and many novice users bought them. Some attacks were motivated by the desire to bring negative publicity to Microsoft, which was perceived as not supporting the open source community. These attacks fostered myths in computing circles that Windows security was weak.

Platform-independent environments such as OpenOffice.org, Perl, and Mozilla Firefox are not exempt. For example, Dropper.MsPMs, a malicious Java archive (JAR) file, was found on machines running Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Some malware packages are written specifically for GNU/Linux. A rootkit — a collection of tools that let an attacker gain access to the root (administrator) account on your computer — are part of the same software family as Trojan horses. These malware packages go by different names such as tOrn and ARK.

Protecting against malware

Many factors determine how secure a system is, but the most important is how the system is configured. This article addresses the configuration of the GNU/Linux desktop. By taking the steps to configure your computer system properly, you can make sure it’s secure. The place to start is with anti-virus protection.

Install antivirus protection: ClamAV

ClamAV is an open source (GPL) antivirus engine designed for detecting Trojans, viruses, malware, and other malicious threats. When installing it, you can specify whether you want to run the program manually or have it run continually by connecting it to a daemon. For a desktop, running the program as a daemon is ideal because you still have the option of performing manual scans.

To install ClamAV as a continually running daemon, perform these steps:

Power up your computer and log in. From the menu bar, click Applications > Accessories > Terminal. When the terminal is launched, enter the following command: sudo apt-get install clamav-daemon Show more Show more icon When prompted, enter your password. Doing so installs a package called clamav-freshclam , which is the updater package for the ClamAV application. You now see a message indicating how much disk space will be used when you install the software. Enter Y at the prompt to begin installation. The installation process should take only a couple of minutes. When it finishes, you see an alert indicating that your virus database is older than x days and that you should update it using the next series of steps. At the prompt, run the command sudo freshclam .

Running freshclam updates your virus definitions to the latest release. Keeping your definitions up-to-date is important, because this is how ClamAV identifies malware.

Virus definitions are patterns of code unique to malware programs. Antivirus scanners compare the contents of your files to the code patterns in a virus definitions database. If a match is found, the program alerts you that an infected file resides on your computer and prevents code in that file from executing.

If the definition for a particular piece of malware isn’t in your virus definitions database, the antivirus scanner won’t know it’s malicious code and lets it run and do whatever damage it was programmed to do. Update your definitions on a regular basis to provide the most comprehensive protection you can.

Starting ClamAV

ClamTk: A GUI for your antivirus application If you don’t like working from the terminal, you can opt to install a GUI for ClamAV called ClamTk. This GUI is easy to install using the Add/Remove Applications tool in Ubuntu. Once installed, run it by clicking Applications > System Tools > Virus Scanner.

Now that you’ve updated your virus definitions, you’re ready to start ClamAV. To run a manual scan of your home folder, go to the terminal prompt and enter clamscan . When the clamscan command finishes, you see a report of how many directories and files were scanned and how many infected files were found.

To run ClamAV as a daemon, go to the terminal prompt and enter clamdscan . The clamdscan command creates a user named ClamAV. You can then add this user to the group that owns the files you want to scan.

Protect against rootkits with rkhunter

Probably the most dangerous malware that GNU/Linux users face is the rootkit. The Rootkit Hunter ( rkhunter ) and chkrootkit programs scan your desktop for suspicious files that an attacker may have installed to gain control of your computer.

To install rkhunter , one of the best programs for finding and removing rootkits, perform these steps:

To navigate back into the terminal, click Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal shell, enter the following command: sudo aptitude install rkhunter Show more Show more icon When you receive a message informing you of how much space the software will use, enter Y to begin installation.

When rkhunter has been installed, you can run it to check your desktop for exploits. Go to the terminal prompt and enter sudo rkhunter --check .

If rkhunter is running properly, you see a list of directories with the word OK or Warning next to them. When started, rkhunter performs several types of scans. After one scan finishes, begin the next by pressing Enter. The types of scans are:

Directories

Exploits on the desktop

Ports that are commonly used for backdoor access

Startup files, groups and accounts, system configuration files, the file system

Applications

After all the scans are complete, rkhunter provides you with a report and creates a log file with the results.

As with ClamAV, you need to update rkhunter regularly so that it can detect the latest vulnerabilities and exploits:

From the terminal, enter sudo rkhunter --update . When prompted, enter your password.

Use Tiger to scan your system

In terms of security, establishing a baseline is one of the most important things you can do. From there, you can tell if anything has been tampered with, because it alters the baseline. If you install an office productivity suite, you also alter the baseline, but you approved that addition. If a piece of malware is installed to your machine, a check against the baseline should reveal this, as well.

Most people don’t have any idea how to manually create a baseline of their computer’s configuration. However, a program called Tiger audits the computer system to see whether anything has been altered. If it has, the software provides an error code.

To install Tiger on your Ubuntu desktop, start by opening the terminal. From there, run the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install tiger Show more Show more icon

That command puts the software on your machine. Now, you need to run it.

With the terminal still open, run sudo tiger to create a report of security issues, and save that report to /var/log/tiger. The name of the file often contains the computer’s hostname followed by the date and time — for example, security.report.hostname.121220-8:46 . The name of the file is provided to you when the report is complete.

To view the report, run sudo gedit and include /var/log/tiger and the file name. Using this example, the command is:

sudo gedit /var/log/tiger/security.report.hostname.121220-8:46 Show more Show more icon

The report then provides error codes for the problems it finds. You can find the meaning of each error code online (see Related topics).

Using a firewall

The next preventative step you should take is to use the firewall built into your operating system. Ubuntu, by default, runs iptables as the firewall on every distribution. Upon installation, the default settings for this firewall allow all incoming and outgoing traffic. To make effective use of the firewall, you need to create rules to lock down your desktop.

You can configure iptables through the terminal, but you can also write firewall rules with a GUI called Gufw based on the Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) program that comes with Ubuntu.

Install Gufw by opening the terminal and running the following command:

sudo apt-get install gufw Show more Show more icon

When the installation is complete, you can access it from System >Administration > Firewall. When opened, enable Gufw, which is disabled by default. Under the heading Actual Status, click the Enabled check box to turn it on. Doing so sets all incoming traffic to Deny. Then click Add to create rules according to how you want UFW to handle certain types of traffic based on the four available options:

Allow. The system allows entry traffic for a port.

The system allows entry traffic for a port. Deny. The system denies entry traffic to a port.

The system denies entry traffic to a port. Reject. The system denies entry traffic to a port and informs the requesting for connection system that it has been rejected.

The system denies entry traffic to a port and informs the requesting for connection system that it has been rejected. Limit. The system denies connections if an IP address has attempted to initiate six or more connections in the past 30 seconds.

When you click Add, a window appears with three tabs: Preconfigured, Simple, and Advanced. The Preconfigured tab is the easiest way to create rules, because you select what you want to allow or deny from a drop-down list, as shown in Figure 1:

Preconfigured rules

With the Simple tab, you can tell UFW whether you want to allow or deny something and then select the protocol/service and port number. See Figure 2:

Simple rules

You can fine-tune the rule even further with the Advanced tab. See Figure 3:

Advanced rules

Backing up and restoring desktop files

Another step in protecting your GNU/Linux desktop involves establishing a backup and recovery process.

At one time you had to install backup and recovery software in most Linux distributions. However, the need to have a sound disaster recovery solution prompted many to include some sort of backup and recovery software in the installation. Ubuntu relies on Duplicity, a program that uses rsync . To make things even easier, Ubuntu comes with Deja Dup, a graphical front end to Duplicity.

To get started with Deja Dup, click System Settings from the gear icon. In the System Settings window, click Backup.

Before you turn on automatic backups, click Storage to set the backup location. You can use Ubuntu One (a cloud storage option), send your backups to another server through FTP, save to a local folder, or set a custom location. When you determine the best location for your backup files, click Folders to select what you want to back up. You have two options here: Folders to back up and Folders to ignore. You can add or delete any folders from either column.

Now, click Schedule to tell Deja Dup how often to run your backups and how long to keep them. You can opt to back up daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly, and these backups can be stored for at least one week to at least one year or even forever.

Now, go back to Overview and slide Automatic backups to On. That’s all it takes. If you ever need to restore files, click Restore, and Deja Dup will ask you from where you want to restore, from what date, and to what location you would like to restore your files. It’s a good idea to make sure your backups are working properly by restoring files every now and again.

Many attacks against computers are launched when a malicious hacker finds a vulnerability in the operating system software or another piece of software. Security experts look for these vulnerabilities and create software patches and updates to plug the holes.

Keep your software up to date. Most operating systems have a built-in feature that informs you when updates are available, and many of the GNU/Linux distributions include this type of functionality. Click the gear icon on the menu bar of the desktop, then click Software Up to Date to launch the Update Manager. The Update Manager usually opens on its own when new updates are available.

In the Update Manager window, you can click Install Updates. You can also choose how often and what software you want to update by clicking Settings. The default options should be good as long as the Important security updates check box is selected and the When there are security updates option is set to Download and install automatically.

Password-protecting the bootloader

When you use GNU/Linux, you can boot the computer to change the root password without having to enter a password. This is called single-user mode. To password-protect this feature, you have two bootloader options: GRUB and LILO. If you use GRUB, you can encrypt your password to make things even more secure. Users of LILO do not have this option. If you use GRUB, perform these steps:

Launch the terminal. At the prompt, enter grub . To make sure you don’t store the password you’re going to create in plain text, enter md5crypt . At the prompt, enter the password you want to use for single-user mode. You are then given an encrypted version of the password. Don’t close this terminal window — you’ll need this encrypted password in the next steps.

Now, you need to edit the GRUB configuration file. Of course, back it up first:

Enter the following command: sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst-backup Show more Show more icon When prompted, enter your password. Enter the following command: gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst Show more Show more icon This takes you to the GRUB configuration file. Locate the line in the file that reads password --md5 and replace the existing password with the encrypted password you created earlier. Listing 1 shows what your GRUB configuration file should look like when the password has been changed: GRUB configuration file, after the password change # Set a timeout, in SEC seconds before automatically booting the default entry # (normally the first entry defined). timeout 3 ## hiddenmenu # Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu) hiddenmenu # Pretty colours #color cyan/blue while/blue ## password ['--md5'] passwd # If used in the first section of the menu file, disable all interactive editing # control (menu entry editor and command-line) and entries protected by the # command 'lock' # e.g. password topsecret # password --md5 $1$jLhUO/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/ # password topsecret # # examples # # title Windows 95/98/NT/2000 Show more Show more icon

Unlike GRUB, LILO doesn’t allow for encrypted passwords. If you’re using the LILO bootloader, perform these steps:

Launch the terminal. At the prompt, enter edit cat /etc/lilo.conf . When the editor opens, search for the password section and create a new password there.

Conclusion

This article has introduced a few tools that can help you harden your GNU/Linux desktop. Even if you install all the tools available to protect your computer and the data stored on it, ultimately, you’re responsible for using those tools.