[App_rpt-users] What is the "debian" user in the DIAL distro?

[Steve Zingman]

Thor,
I agree that things need to be tightened up. Now that the mandate has 
changed, those things are changing. I would welcome someone taking on 
the guidance in system administration piece of the puzzle.

73, Steve N4IRS

On 5/11/2017 12:35 PM, Thor Wiegman wrote:
> You're not the first person I'm aware of to have this type of 
> problem.  AllStarLink nodes are an easy target to become bitcoin 
> miners and members of botnets.  Most people installing these nodes 
> don't know the basics of Linux system administration and the defaults 
> aren't even remotely secure.
>
> Not only should that "debian" user be deleted, the appropriate changes 
> to SSH need to be made to prevent the superuser "root" from logging in 
> remotely.  That is one of the first things that everyone needs to be 
> change after installation of a DIAL system, not sure why it's even 
> allowed by default.
>
> I've noticed that a lot of node ops tend to login as root and execute 
> commands as the root user.  Crazy!  It's an extremely dangerous and 
> insecure thing to do, but people new to Linux don't know any better.
>
> It would be nice if the default installation were setup in such a way 
> that prevented or discouraged login by the superuser.  It's odd that 
> sudo doesn't appear to be installed by default.  Would be very nice if 
> the installation script prompted for the creation of a user account 
> with proper permissions in much the same way as standard distros do.  
> Not perfect, but it's a start.
>
> Most of these systems are being run by people who are new to Linux.  
> They don't know about Linux/Unix system administration and nobody is 
> "elmering" them in it.  The result is people taking dangerous 
> shortcuts and developing bad habits.  The community would benefit from 
> some guidance in system administration as well as from some improved 
> defaults in the distro.
>
>
>
> On 05/10/2017 12:38 PM, app_rpt-users-request at lists.allstarlink.org 
> wrote:
>> What is the "debian" user in the DIAL distro?
>
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