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Contents
See also Softpanorama Unix Audit and internal Scanning Tools (Internal Vulnerability Scanning) See also History of Hardening Scripts for older generic hardening scripts (Cops, Tiger, etc.)
[Oct 19, 2004] SecurityDocs Foundation for Minimal Solaris 10 Systems by Glenn M. Brunette, Jr.
The topic for this article is the Solaris 10 Reduced Networking Software Group (also commonly known as the Solaris 10 Reduced Networking Meta Cluster). This software group is new and joins the five existing software groups available in Solaris today: Core, End User, Developer, Entire and Entire + OEM software groups. The Reduced Networking Software Group is positioned as a subset of Core and represents the smallest amount of Solaris that can or should be installed and have a working and supported system. (Note that for support reasons, it is not advised to remove packages installed by the Reduced Networking Software Group.)
To install the Reduced Networking Software Group, simply select it from the list when doing a graphical installation. If you are using JumpStart, then you should use the cluster keyword with the new value SUNWCrnet. The following is a sample JumpStart profile that uses the Reduced Networking Software Group. This profile was also used to build the system used as an example in this article.
***** Alex Noordergraaf and Keith Watson SolarisTM Operating Environment Minimization for Security: A Simple, Reproducible and Secure Application Installation Methodology December 1999. This is a very good paper. It explains how to remove unnecessary packages -- actually they consider a very practical case of Solaris + Netscape Enterprise Server. The paper a little bit weak on the tool side, though.
The Solaris Operating Environment installation process requires the selection of one of four installation clusters:
- Core
- End User
- Developer
- Entire Distribution
Each installation cluster represents a specific group of packages (operating system modules) to be installed. This grouping together of packages into large clusters is done to simplify the installation of the OS for the mass market. Because each of these installation clusters contains support for a variety of hardware platforms (SolarisTM Operating Environment (Intel Platform Edition), microSPARCTM, UltraSPARCTM, UltraSPARC II, and so on) and software requirements (NIS, NIS+, DNS, OpenWindowsTM, Common Desktop Environment (CDE), Development, CAD, and more), far more packages are installed than will actually ever be used on a single Solaris Operating Enironment.
The Core cluster installs the smallest Solaris Operating Environment image. Only packages that may be required for any SPARCTM or Solaris Operating Environment (Intel Platform Edition) system are installed. The End User cluster builds on the Core cluster by also installing the window managers included with the Solaris Operating Environment (OpenWindows and CDE). The Developer and Entire Distribution clusters include additional libraries, header files, and software packages that may be needed on systems used as compile and development servers.
The size of the clusters varies significantly: the Core cluster contains only 39 packages and uses 52MBytes; the End User cluster has 142 packages and uses 242 MBytes; the Developer cluster has 235 packages and consumes 493 MBytes of disk space. Experience to date has shown that in many cases, a secure server may require only 10 Solaris Operating Environment packages and use as few as 36MBytes of disk space.
Installing unnecessary services, packages, and applications can severely compromise system security. One well known example of this is the rpc.cmsd daemon, which is unnecessary on many data center systems. This daemon is installed and started by default when the End User, Developer, or Entire Distribution cluster is chosen during the installation process.
There have been many bugs filed against the rpc.cmsd subsystem of OpenWindows/CDE in the last few years, and at least two CERT advisories (CA-99-08, CA-96.09). To make matters even worse, scanners for rpc.cmsd are included in the most common Internet scanning tools available on the Internet. The best protection against rpc.cmsd vulnerabilities is to not install the daemon at all, and avoid having to insure it is not accidentally enabled.
The problem described above is well known in the computer industry, and there are hundreds of similar examples. Not surprisingly, almost every security reference book ever written discusses the need to perform "minimal OS installations" [Garfinkel]. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Other than the occasional firewall, no software applications are shipped with lists of their package requirements, and there's no easy way of determining this information other then through trial and error.
Because it is so difficult to determine the minimal set of necessary packages, system administrators commonly just install the Entire Distribution cluster. While this may be the easiest to do from the short-term perspective of getting a system up and running, it makes it nearly impossible to secure the system. Unfortunately, this practice is all too common, and is even done by so-called experts brought in to provide infrastructure support, web services, or application support. (If your organization is outsourcing such activities, be sure to require the supplier to provide information on what their OS installation policies and procedures are, or you may be in for some unpleasant surprises.)
The rest of this article presents one method for determining the minimal set of packages required by a particular application--the iPlanetTM Enterprise Server. Future articles will discuss other applications. The tentative list includes NFSTM Servers (with SecureRPC and Solstice DiskSuiteTM), iPlanetTM WebTop, and SunTM Cluster. If you have followed this procedure and developed the scripts for a particular application, please forward them to the authors for inclusion in future articles.
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
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Created: May 16, 1997; Last modified: March 12, 2019
