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How to Audit Linux System’s Security with Lynis – Guide
The security of your system should always be your top priority. Here it is how to use Lynis to perform a security audit on a Linux machine. Having a secure server or PC should be the main concern of any Linux administrator or user. Although Linux is a secure operating system, it is vulnerable to attacks and security breaches in the same way as other operating systems. You will learn how to use Lynis to audit and scan your Linux computer for security holes and holes in this article. Lynis is an open source program that runs on a variety of Unix-based operating systems, including Linux, macOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, and others.
How to Auditing Linux System Security with Lynis
Installing Lynis on Linux
There are several methods by which you can run or install Lynis on Linux, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s take a look at two of the most popular methods.
1. Installing Lynis through a package manager
You can easily install Lynis using the default package manager on your system, depending on your Linux distribution.
On Debian-based Linux distributions like Ubuntu, just run:
sudo apt install lynis
On RHEL-based Linux distributions such as Fedora and CentOS:
sudo dnf install lynis
On Arch-based Linux distributions:
sudo pacman -S lynis
You can check the installed version of Lynis using the following command:
sudo lynis –version
2. Running Lynis directly from the source
For a minimal footprint on your PC, you can run Lynis from the tarball file without installing it.
Just download the Lynis tarball file and extract it using the tar command. Then go to the extracted folder and run a Lynis audit as follows:
sudo ./lynis audit system
Auditing a Linux Machine with Lynis
Auditing is one of the most common Lynis use cases among system administrators, system auditors, and other security professionals.
You can initiate an audit of your system by running the following command:
sudo lynis audit system
Lynis first profiles your computer system, that is, it checks which operating system you are using, the kernel, hardware and other important parameters to perform the audit.
How to Review Lynis audit reports
For example, some of the important categories include:
In addition to these categories, Lynis also scans your network, file systems, shells, memory and processes, and other critical parts of your system.
color code
In addition to categorization, Lynis uses three main color codes to show the severity of a security breach or potential security risk.
Green shows that the scanned module or software is ok and that you do not need to take any action. The remaining color codes usually require your urgent attention to remedy the security breach or some other form of action. For example, to update or update the software.
Orange shows that there is a cue you should look into. For example, a software module or service is disabled, so Lynis was unable to perform an audit. Or it could be that the software module was not found by Lynis.
The last color code is red. You should pay extra attention to report outputs marked in red. This indicates that you should urgently fix the checked item because it poses a major security threat to your system.
Final note
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