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 […]

2016-05-18 Michael BoelenDevelopment Leave a comment

Secure Software Development: CII Best Practices

Best Practices from the Core Infrastructure Initiative Last month the Core Infrastructure Initiative, or CII, launched their CII best practices project. Its primary goal is to gamify the process of building more secure software. Let’s have a look at the project, and how it can help. Open Source and Security If we look in the open source world of software, we see that many projects were created by volunteers. While doing this voluntary, this doesn’t say anything about the quality of the […]

2016-02-15 (last updated at March 12th, 2017) Michael BoelenSystem Administration 6 comments

Automatic Security Updates with DNF

DNF: Automatic Security Updates The Dandified YUM tool, DNF, has become a powerful package manager for systems running Fedora. As it looks now, it will become also the default package manager for CentOS 8 and RHEL 8. One of the benefits from dnf is the option to retrieve security information very easily. This allows us to use it for automatic security patching of our Linux systems. Let’s explore the options and see how dnf-automatic can help us with fully automated […]

2016-01-25 (last updated at October 12th, 2016) Michael BoelenSoftware Leave a comment

Showing Available Security Updates with DNF

Checking Security Updates for your Software Packages DNF is the default package manager since Fedora 22. As it is considered to be a better version of YUM, some of our Lynis users asked for DNF support. With focus on auditing and security patching, we definitely wanted to see that for ourselves. While building support, I’ve gathered the most important commands. In this blog post we will have a look how we can leverage the DNF output to show only the […]

2015-11-03 (last updated at July 5th, 2018) Michael BoelenVulnerabilities Leave a comment

Linux vulnerabilities: from detection to treatment

If you worked with a computer the last decade, you know the importance of keeping your software up-to-date. Those who don’t, are stacking up vulnerabilities, waiting for them to being exploited by others. Although Linux and most software are open source and can be reviewed, security flaws in software packages remain. While it isn’t easy to close every vulnerability on your system, we can at least create a stable process around it. This guide explains what is available, from vulnerability to […]

2015-06-22 Michael BoelenAuditing, Defensive Security, Hardening, Vulnerabilities Leave a comment

Forget Linux Vulnerability Scanning: Get Better Defenses

Building Defenses Beyond Linux Vulnerability Scanning Every month or so, I get a few questions about the vulnerability capabilities Lynis has to offer. It made me think about this subject and I realized something: Many security professionals are still focusing too much on vulnerabilities. They want to know their security gaps, so they can know where they stand. While this isn’t a bad approach, there might be a better solution. The solution I will discuss today is to focus on (permanent) […]