Monitoring

How to check if your Arch Linux system needs a reboot

Want to check if a reboot of the system is needed on Arch Linux? Here is how that can be done including the relevant commands.

Summary

By default Arch will install the kernel in /boot with the name vmlinuz-linux. To determine if the system is running the latest kernel, we can compare the running kernel and the one on disk. Running kernel One way to determine the running kernel is with the uname command. By default installed and with the -r parameter it will provide the kernel release version. # uname -r 3.17.4-1-ARCH Kernel on disk Checking the latest kernel on disk is almost as easy.

Alternatives to Bastille Linux: system hardening with Lynis

Bastille Linux is a great tool for hardening of Linux systems. With the project looking outdated (or even dead), there are new alternatives to Bastille.

Summary

Many people used Bastille Linux to harden their Linux systems. Unfortunately the website of Bastille seems very outdated, including the tool. This resulted in people searching for a great alternative to replace this tool. We found the alternative by actually combining different solutions, being more powerful. Security automation is hot, so forget Bastille and do it the right way. Automatic hardening makes sense Most system administrators can’t keep up with the new technologies and security threats.

Monitor for File System Changes on Linux

Protecting against file system changes is an important step in keeping your systems secure. Prevention is important, but detection might be more valuable!

Summary

The most important areas with information security are preventing some events from occurring and detecting it if something still happens. Unfortunately most companies forget to put enough effort in detection unauthorized activities. In this article we have a special look at monitoring your file system, to detect changes to your critical system files and their configuration files. Method 1: File Integrity tools The first method is monitoring file changes with the help of specific tools.