This chapter will provide a basic introduction to system security concepts, some
general good rules of thumb, and some advanced topics under FreeBSD. A lot of the topics
covered here can be applied to system and Internet security in general as well. The
Internet is no longer a “friendly” place in which everyone wants to be your
kind neighbor. Securing your system is imperative to protect your data, intellectual
property, time, and much more from the hands of hackers and the like.
FreeBSD provides an array of utilities and mechanisms to ensure the integrity and
security of your system and network.
After reading this chapter, you will know:
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Basic system security concepts, in respect to FreeBSD.
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About the various crypt mechanisms available in FreeBSD, such as DES and MD5.
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How to set up one-time password authentication.
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How to configure TCP Wrappers for use with inetd.
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How to set up KerberosIV on FreeBSD releases prior to
5.0.
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How to set up Kerberos5 on FreeBSD.
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How to configure IPsec and create a VPN between
FreeBSD/Windows® machines.
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How to configure and use OpenSSH, FreeBSD's SSH implementation.
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What file system ACLs are and how to use them.
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How to use the Portaudit utility to audit third party
software packages installed from the Ports Collection.
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How to utilize the FreeBSD security advisories publications.
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Have an idea of what Process Accounting is and how to enable it on FreeBSD.
Before reading this chapter, you should:
Additional security topics are covered throughout this book. For example, Mandatory
Access Control is discussed in Chapter 16 and Internet Firewalls
are discussed in Chapter 28.
