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12 linux server hardening practices that shut the door for attacker
A hands on hardening baseline you can finish before your coffee gets cold, with a command that proves every single step worked.
Put a new Linux server on the internet and set a watch.
Within minutes, bots will start knocking on port 22. They are not knocking on your server, specifically. They are knocking on every IP on the planet, 24 hours a day, hoping someone left the backdoor open.
Most hardening guides will answer this with a 50 item checklist lifted from another article written five years ago. Half of which is already obsolete or makes your life harder.
So, I stuck to 12 moves. I did every single one on my Kali machine, and every image below is pulled directly from my terminal. Every move has a check command, so you can see if it worked without me telling you.
Lock things down.
Step 0 : Two Rules Before You Touch Anything
Rule one: If you are going to be working over SSH, open a second SSH session and leave it open the whole time. In case one change breaks your ability to login, you can always revert it using the second…
