How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

Hi, I started playing around with a small VPS. To learn about security I followed a tutorial on Github [1] in which they talk about a lot of tools. I understand that ssh, ufw and fail2ban are the most important but for example should I use PSAD or CrowdSec? Basically I want to self host services and run web apps, so how can I know how much security do I need? Thanks for your help [1]: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

> In short it’s all about control, privacy, and security, in that order. I am going to strongly urge you to consider changing that order and move *security* to the first priority. I have long run my own servers, it is much easier to setup a server with strong security foundation, than to clean up afterwards. As a beginner, you should stick to a well known and documented Linux server distribution such as Ubuntu Server LTS or Fedora. Only install the programs you need. Do not install a windowing system on it. Do everything for the server from the command line. Here are a few blog posts I have bookmarked over the years that I think are geared to beginners: "My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers": An quick walk through of how to do basic server security manually [1]. There was a good Hacker News discussion a

I can't claim to have been through it but this is sitting on my bookmarks folder and looks very useful: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve... My only tip I haven't seen mentioned here is be very careful using docker with ufw, as by default docker will effectively override ufw port restrictions if it is told to expose a port.

I am getting into self-hosting and it seems it takes an awful lot of work to secure your general-purpose Linux distribution.[0] I am surprised that the default seems to be to do all of this by hand. How do you deploy a secure Linux home server? Are there distros that are pre-configured for this purpose? Do you use any Ansible playbooks (or other scripts)? Or do you indeed implement all security measures manually? [0]: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

It has been mentioned in one of the pull request that this guide was being discussed on HN right after it got here: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve.... There are two fresh threads on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/arx7xo/howtosec... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/arx7st/howtosecureal...

Would you mind pasting the output of `deborphan` showing those two or creating a new issue on my GitHub page? I want to show it to the author of `deborphan` to see if he knows why its happening. https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve...

Hey folks! I am the author of this guide. I did not know this was here or I would have commented sooner. This is my first time putting a guide like this together. I see a lot of really great feedback and I will be incorporating them into future updates. I don't have time today but I will reply individually to all the comments that I can. I appreciate any/all feedback/advice. If possible, could future issues be submitted to GitHub because it is easier for me to manage if everything is in one place. https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve... But right now I need to find all the other places this guide is linked to with comments so I can address them too. :)