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Mastering Linux Security and Hardening

You're reading from   Mastering Linux Security and Hardening Secure your Linux server and protect it from intruders, malware attacks, and other external threats

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2018
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781788620307
Length 376 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Donald A. Tevault Donald A. Tevault
Author Profile Icon Donald A. Tevault
Donald A. Tevault
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Table of Contents (12) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Running Linux in a Virtual Environment FREE CHAPTER 2. Securing User Accounts 3. Securing Your Server with a Firewall 4. Encrypting and SSH Hardening 5. Mastering Discretionary Access Control 6. Access Control Lists and Shared Directory Management 7. Implementing Mandatory Access Control with SELinux and AppArmor 8. Scanning, Auditing, and Hardening 9. Vulnerability Scanning and Intrusion Detection 10. Security Tips and Tricks for the Busy Bee 11. Other Books You May Enjoy

Setting up sudo privileges for full administrative users


Before we look at how to limit what users can do, let's first look at how to allow a user to do everything, including logging into the root command prompt. There are a couple of methods for doing that.

Method 1 – adding users to a predefined admin group

The first method, which is the simplest, is to add users to a predefined administrators group and then, if it hasn't already been done, to configure the sudo policy to allow that group to do its job. It's simple enough to do except that different Linux distro families use different admin groups. 

On Unix, BSD, and most Linux systems, you would add users to the wheel group. (Members of the Red Hat family, including CentOS, fall into this category.) When I do the groups command on my CentOS machine, I get this:

[donnie@localhost ~]$ groups
donnie wheel
[donnie@localhost ~]$

This shows that I'm a member of the wheel group. By doing sudo visudo, I'll open the sudo policy file. Scrolling down...

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