Noob question

[Viper8896]

i know nothing about security. any obvious things i should know or do to my distro?

[lakerdonald]

1)Turn on the Firewall
2)Download the newest kernel patches
3)Keep yourself aware of any Bug/Security Reports for the applications that you use, and be sure to always update to the newest patchlevel.

[bryansmith]

Hi Viper8896,

One thing to keep in mind is to not use your root account for day to day things. It should only be used when nessecary. If you are not root, nothing can happen to important system files because you will not have the right permissions to access the system files.

Hope that helps,
Bryan

[jcdude2525]

Hello-

Definitally learn IPtables first. Also, don't keep any un-needed services going (like if you arn't running a web server then don't leave apache running, or proftpd or something simmilar). Turn of sshd if you arn't going to be logging in from other places. And definitally, don't run as root daily. One reason why you shouldn't do this-

Suppose you are cleaning out a directory with a bunch of sub-directories, you would do something like (assuming you are using a root shell)-

# rm -r ./

But if you forget the .

# rm -r /

rm -r / deletes EVERYTHING on the system. If you are a regular user, you can't do this. Only root can do this. So, use su if you have to switch over to root.

You can learn iptables here-
http://www.iptables.org/

Hope this helps.

-Jim

[Viper8896]

i knew all that stuff anyway but if u got any others u could post here also anyone who didnt know will see this.