2017-03-13 Michael BoelenFreeBSD Leave a comment

Vulnerable packages on FreeBSD: pkg audit

Auditing FreeBSD with pkg audit FreeBSD is definitely another beast than Linux. In some areas, FreeBSD is really a powerful operating system. Package management is maybe not the first one you may think of. Typically FreeBSD users have two options when it comes to installing packages. Ports collection The ports tree allows the administration to build software they need, with the compilation flags he or she prefers. This makes the software optimized and typically the last versions are available. The downside […]

2016-03-31 (last updated at October 18th, 2016) Michael BoelenFreeBSD, Identity & Access Management Leave a comment

What is the ‘toor’ user on FreeBSD?

What is the ‘toor’ user on FreeBSD? Linux and *BSD systems have by default a root user installed. As it has a user ID of zero (0), it gains the highest level of permissions from the kernel. On FreeBSD systems, there is also the ‘toor’ user, with the equal high-level user ID of zero. It is simply the reversed version of ‘root’, and installed as a backup account. By default, it has no shell assigned, so it can’t log in. […]

2014-04-09 (last updated at October 20th, 2014) Michael BoelenAuditing, FreeBSD, Hardening, Lynis

FreeBSD hardening with Lynis

FreeBSD hardening with Lynis Lynis development has its roots on a FreeBSD system, therefore FreeBSD hardening is also easy and supported when using Lynis. People who want to audit and harden their FreeBSD system will discover Lynis to be a powerful tool for this purpose. In this article we will focus on how to audit your system with Lynis. Lynis Lynis is an open source audit tool. It only requires root access and a normal shell and the tool is […]