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Linux Server Security, Second Edition
book

Linux Server Security, Second Edition

by Michael D. Bauer
January 2005
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
544 pages
23h 44m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Server Security, Second Edition
This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition
Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
316
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Chapter 10: Securing Web Servers
Strengthen
Never trust user input. Secure access to external files and programs.
Diversify
Use layers of protection. Don’t rely on security by obscurity of a single mecha-
nism, such as a password.
Document
Write down what you’ve done because you won’t remember it. Honest.
The Web Server
A secure web service starts with a secure web server, which in turn starts with good
code—no buffer overflows or other problems that could be exploited to gain root
privileges. Apache has had a handful of critical vulnerabilities over the past few years,
and has generally released fixed versions promptly. Apache powers about two-thirds
of the 55 million hosts in the monthly Netcraft survey (http://news.netcraft.com/
archives/web_server_survey.html).
Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS), with less than a third of Apache’s mar-
ket share, has had many critical and ongoing security problems. A Microsoft Secu-
rity Bulletin issued in April 2002 described 10 critical problems in IIS 4 and 5. These
include vulnerabilities to buffer overruns, Denial of Service, and cross-site scripting;
a number of these provide full-system privileges to the attacker. IIS 6 is reportedly
better.
In practice, most Apache security problems are caused by configuration errors, and
I’ll
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596006705Supplemental ContentCatalog PageErrata