Linux Server Hardening Guide

Since Kali Linux is a Debian-based Linux distribution, you can use the Linux hardening tips above to address the security weaknesses in Kali Linux systems. This is very useful if you want to disallow users to use same old passwords. But, we’ve just scratched the surface of Linux Hardening—there are a lot of complex, nitty-gritty configurations. To learn more about how to harden your Linux servers for better security, check out these Linux courses. The list can go on and on, but these should be enough to start with. For example, some companies add banners to deter attackers and discourage them from continuing further.

You need to decide what security measures are needed, but remember, this isn’t a one-time job. To take SSH security to the next level, you may also enable two-factor authentication. In this approach, you receive a one-time password on your mobile phone, email or through a third-party aunthentication app. Before you go for this approach, make sure that you have added your own public key to the server and it works. Otherwise, you’ll lock yourself out and may lose access to the remote server specially if you are using a cloud server like Linode where you don’t have physical access to the server. To thwart SSH bruteforce attacks, you can use a security tool like Fail2Ban.

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I have written a detailed introductory guide on using Fail2Ban which you should read. When it comes to security, you should follow the principal of least privilege. Newer SSH versions automatically have SSH protocol 2 enabled but no harm in double checking it. Some older linux hardening and security lessons SSH version might still have SSH protocol 1 available. A good way to monitor log activity is to use third-party log monitoring software, such as LogWatch, for log analysis and notifications. Notifications and daily digests can be sent to administrators via email.

Linux Server Hardening in 15 Steps

In this short post, we covered many important configurations for Linux security. But, we’ve just scratched the surface of Linux hardening—there are a lot of complex, nitty-gritty configurations. To learn more about how to harden your Linux servers for better security, check out my courses on Pluralsight. Portioning disks gives you the opportunity of performance and security in case of a system error.

Configure and install a fail2ban firewall

These server hardening checklist items are broad strokes that apply to Windows, Linux, and other types of servers. If you want a detailed breakdown, the NIST and CIS benchmarks have the resources you need. Generating a PEM (Privacy Enhanced https://remotemode.net/ Mail) key and establishing a secure connection to a Linux server is a fundamental process in securing remote access. PEM keys, often used for SSH (Secure Shell) authentication, provide a robust alternative to password-based logins.

  • The subsequent connection, validated by the PEM key pair, ensures a seamless and secure interaction with the Linux server, contributing to a robust security posture.
  • Time invested going through steps like the ones laid out will return dividends in the future.
  • One of the most popular implementations of SCAP is OpenSCAP and it is very helpful for vulnerability assessment and as a hardening helper.
  • Similarly for Linux Mint, as an Ubuntu-derived Desktop Linux platform, the same hardening procedures used for Debian-Linux should be adopted.
  • They can help greatly in finding new techniques to further increase your security defenses.

Useful for system hardening are auditing tools as they perform a health scan of the system and define room for improvement. Additionally useful are tools that actually also implement some of the hardening measures. Each file is assigned an owner and a group and a set of file permissions.

Utilize Backups and Test Them Often

Still, don’t be scared and test your changes first on a virtual system where you always have root access. Create an additional test user and log in with that, to help with testing. After the first installation steps, the creation of a user account is performed.

Django Web Framework Python Learn web development MDN

Furnish essential details such as project name, location, and interpreter type, utilizing either venv or a custom environment. Whether you’re a Django developer looking to enhance your deployment skills or a Kubernetes enthusiast eager to explore Django integration, this guide has something for everyone. Kabaki is a full-stack software engineer and a technical writer with a passion for creating innovative digital experiences. When not coding, he enjoys sharing knowledge with others by writing technical articles to help developers hone their skills. You can copy the keys to your .env file if you have one, or download the CSV file for later usage. You can optionally select a region closer to you or your users.

  • Let’s run the development server to see if everything is tied up well.
  • Let’s see how to upload data into the model using Django Admin Interface.
  • Some well known sites that use Django include PBS, Instagram, Disqus, Washington Times, Bitbucket and Mozilla.
  • Learning Django may also be part of a class about learning Python or general web programming, or a basic overview of Python may be part of a class dedicated solely to learning Django.

Our complete installation guide covers all the possibilities; this guide will get you to a simple, minimal installation that’ll work while you walk through the introduction. Django Template Engine provides filters that are used to transform the values of variables and tag arguments. Tags can’t modify the value of a variable whereas filters can be used for incrementing the value of a variable or modifying it to one’s own need. This is one of the most important facilities provided by Django Templates.

Creating Asynchronous Tasks With Celery and Django (Overview)

This problem may arise when you install Django in a global or default environment. To overcome this problem we will use virtual environments in Python. This enables us to create multiple different Django environments on a single computer.

You can then serve these assets directly through an NGINX or Apache web server – a more efficient approach for production environments. WhiteNoise is a Python package that seamlessly integrates with Django, making it an ideal choice for serving static files in shared hosting environments. Unlike other software installations such as Apache and Nginx, which may not be permissible in certain hosting environments, WhiteNoise can be easily installed alongside your other project packages. This YAML defines a PersistentVolume named staticfiles-pv with a 1 GB storage capacity, allowing multiple pods to read and write to it simultaneously. The storage is provided by a local host path located at /data/static. With just the steps above, WhiteNoise can serve you static files in production.

Creating a Django project

In this case, changes to static files may not be automatically detected and applied by Django, necessitating manual intervention to ensure that the updated files are served to users. Whenever we create a Model, Delete a Model, or update anything in any of models.py of our project. In Django, STATIC_ROOT is a configuration setting used to specify the absolute file system path where collected static files will be stored when you run the collectstatic management command. Static files typically include CSS, JavaScript, images, and other assets used by your web application.

  • Most of the time when you’ll be working on some Django projects, you’ll find that each project may need a different version of Django.
  • We’ll outline the main features, including some advanced functionality that we won’t have time to cover in detail in this module.
  • You’ve started the Django development server, a lightweight web server written
    purely in Python.
  • Kubernetes, the top open-source container orchestration platform, offers a robust and adaptable environment for handling containerized applications.

In Kubernetes, a Deployment is a resource object used to manage the deployment and scaling of applications. It’s part of the Kubernetes API group and provides a declarative way to define and manage the desired state of your application. In Kubernetes, a PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) is a resource object used by a pod to request a specific amount of storage with certain properties from a PV.

Modeling Polymorphism in Django With Python

The reason why you would want to create a static_demo directory in the static directory is to help you namespace your static assets. If you have more than one app, and you have the CSS in both apps named as styles.css, Django would only work with the first stylesheet it finds, as it wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the others. Therefore, we namespace them so that Django will be able to know which asset file we’re referring to in our templates. We want the index view in the static_demo app to render the home page whenever a user visits our site. So we’ll create a URL scheme for the view function that will render the home page.

We have created a database for our blog application and learned how to manipulate the data via the admin. Organizationally, a Django website consists of a single project and multiple apps for discrete functionality. Some of these apps are built-in, but you can also add Django for Python Developers Lessons new ones when building new features, such as a blog. The code snippet below shows a very simple Django model for a Team object. It defines the team name and team level as character fields and specifies a maximum number of characters to be stored for each record.

The STATIC_ROOT setting is an essential part of serving static files in a production environment. Django web applications manage and query data through Python objects referred to as models. Models define the structure of stored data, including the field types and possibly also their maximum size, default values, selection list options, help text for documentation, label text for forms, etc. The definition of the model is independent of the underlying database — you can choose one of several as part of your project settings. This YAML defines a ConfigMap named app-cm in the django-app namespace, and it contains various key-value pairs that store configuration data.

Django for Python Developers Lessons