AJ
he/him
Winter 2 batch
Security/privacy nerd
What we're covering
tl;dr: security-related production environment best practices
- General stuff
- Secure software sources
- Source installation management
- Logs
General stuff
Conservative service management
Rigorous structure (Puppet/Ansible/Chef/etc. - etckeeper is super easy)
Use automatic software upgrades (unattended-upgrades + needsrestart packages in Debian and Debian derivatives)
Encrypt data in motion
General stuff II
Use sudo, not the root account
Disallow all (direct) logins to root
Document setups
Do all of these things now
Secure software sources
Prefer software from official distribution repositories
It's more trustworthy and has stronger authentication/integrity guarantees
Don't install unpackaged software (except your application)
Too hard to manage (esp. for upgrades)
Source installation management
Minimal permissions (don't use sledgehammers like sudo chmod -R 777 .)
Don't allow the app to write to itself
Give write access to logs, temporary files, and state
Logs
Restrict logfile permissions
Don't let your app tamper with logs (use syslog, systemd-journald)
Delete your logs
Otherwise you're handing free data to attackers
Thanks!
Questions
Vote on whether we'll cover HTTPS or cryptography next week
Access this presentation again