Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

Hands-on lab – setting up a chroot directory for the sftpusers group

For this lab, you can use either the CentOS VM or the Ubuntu VM. You'll add a group, then configure the sshd_config file to allow group members to only be able to log in via SFTP, and then confine them to their own directories. For the simulated client machine, you can use the Terminal of your macOS or Linux desktop machine, or any of the available Bash shells from your Windows machine. Let's get started:

1. Create the sftpusers group:

sudo groupadd sftpusers

2. Create a user account for Max and add him to the sftpusers group. On CentOS, do the following:

sudo useradd -G sftpusers max

On Ubuntu, do the following:

sudo useradd -m -d /home/max -s /bin/bash -G sftpusers max