Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

Hands-on lab – setting a kernel capability

For this lab, you'll allow a normal user to run a Python web server. You can use any of your virtual machines. Let's get started:

1. If Apache is installed on your virtual machine, ensure that it's stopped for Ubuntu:

sudo systemctl stop apache2

For CentOS, do the following:

sudo systemctl stop httpd

2. Install Python 2 for Ubuntu:

sudo apt install python

For CentOS 7, do the following:

sudo yum install python

For CentOS 8, do the following:

sudo dnf install python2

3. From within your own home directory, attempt to start the Python SimpleHTTPServer with just your normal user privileges, and note the error message on Ubuntu and CentOS 7:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80

On CentOS 8, you'll see the following: ...