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Just How Effective is System Hardening?

Posted by timothy on from the how-large-is-your-facade dept.

SkiifGeek, pointing to our recent coverage of what the NSA went through to create SELINUX, wants to know just how effective system hardening is at preventing successful attack, and writes "When Jay Beale presented at DefCon 14, he quoted statistics (PDF link) that Bastille protected against every major threat targeting Red Hat 6, before the threats were known. With simple techniques available for the everyday user which can start them on the path towards system hardening, just how effective have you found system and network hardening to be? The NSA does have some excellent guides to help harden not only your OS but also your browser and network equipment."

13 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Ahh yes, by abolitiontheory · · Score: 5, Funny

    /. is just the place to come for advice on "system hardening."

    1. Re:Ahh yes, by sm62704 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Trinity" from The Matrix hardened my system!

      Oh, you're talking about computer security? Never mind, then.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    2. Re:Ahh yes, by abolitiontheory · · Score: 4, Funny
      Funny, all I got was,

      "The system is down."

      Am I gay?

  2. Concrete by Urger · · Score: 5, Funny

    I found encasing the system in steel reinforced concrete made the system much harder. Similar attempts to place end users in the same situation were not as successful.

    --
    Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
    1. Re:Concrete by abolitiontheory · · Score: 5, Funny

      concrete does end users quite nicely though.

    2. Re:Concrete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Don't forget the amontillado.

  3. Easy by J3M · · Score: 5, Funny

    I use Ubuntu 8.04. It's hardy out of the box.

    --
    Aych tea tea pea colon slash slash slash dot dot org slash
  4. Everyone knows... by neokushan · · Score: 4, Funny

    The best kind of security is obscurity! So batten down the hatches by ditching your fancy *nix/BSD servers and get those old Amigas you have stashed in a loft somewhere up and running. Bonus points for using a C64.

    --
    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    1. Re:Everyone knows... by sm62704 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I use security through obsolescence. Nobody's going to crack my ENIAC clone!

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  5. Re:Is it just me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "We're from the government. We're here to help you."

  6. Re:There's no perfect safety ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I heard that story from a Chinese, but the bear was a testicle-eating wild pig. Much better story

  7. Re:There's no perfect safety ... by WNight · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, who'd hack the whitehouse? They've deleted all their own email and sensitive documents years ago. Now that ironworking company, that sounds interesting...

  8. Re:Would be really handy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "it took us 3 days with RegMon and a grab bag of other utilities to revert the system to just basic usable mode. Office XP wouldn't even open"

    That's because your system was secured from harmful applications...