Posts Tagged ‘hosting server’

How to improve Linux kernel security with GrSecurity / Maximum Linux kernel security with GrSecurity

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

In short I’ll explain here what is Grsecurity http://www.grsecurity.net/ for all those who have not used it yet and what kind of capabilities concerning enhanced kernel security it has.

Grsecurity is a combination of patches for the Linux kernel accenting at the improving kernel security.

The typical application of GrSecurity is in the field of Linux systems which are administered through SSH/Shell, e.g. (remote hosts), though you can also configure grsecurity on a normal Linux desktop system if you want a super secured Linux desktop ;).

GrSecurity is used heavily to protect server system which require a multiple users to have access to the shell.

On systems where multiple user access is required it’s a well known fact that (malicious users, crackers or dumb script kiddies) get administrator (root) privileges with a some just poped in 0 day root kernel exploit.
If you’re an administrator of a system (let’s say a web hosting) server with multiple users having access to the shell it’s also common that exploits aiming at hanging in certain daemon service is executed by some of the users.
In other occasions you have users which are trying to DoS the server with some 0 day Denial of Service exploit.
In all this cases GrSecurity having a kernel with grsecurity is priceless.

Installing grsecurity patched kernel is an easy task for Debian and Ubuntu and is explained in one of my previous articles.
This article aims to explain in short some configuration options for a GrSecurity tightened kernel, when one have to compile a new kernel from source.

I would skip the details on how to compile the kernel and simply show you some picture screens with GrSecurity configuration options which are working well and needs to be set-up before a make command is issued to compile the new kernel.

After preparing the kernel source for compilation and issuing:

linux:/usr/src/kernel-source$ make menuconfig

You will have to select options like the ones you see in the pictures below:

[nggallery id=”8″]

After completing and saving your kernel config file, continue as usual with an ordinary kernel compilation, e.g.:

linux:/usr/src/kernel-source$ make
linux:/usr/src/kernel-source$ make modules
linux:/usr/src/kernel-source$ su root
linux:/usr/src/kernel-source# make modules_install
linux:/usr/src/kernel-source# make install
linux:/usr/src/kernel-source# mkinitrd -o initrd.img-2.6.xx 2.6.xx

Also make sure the grub is properly configured to load the newly compiled and installed kernel.

After a system reboot, if all is fine you should be able to boot up the grsecurity tightened newly compiled kernel, but be careful and make sure you have a backup solution before you reboot, don’t blame me if your new grsecurity patched kernel fails to boot! You’re on your own boy 😉
This article is written thanks to based originally on his article in Bulgarian. If you’re a Bulgarian you might also checkout static’s blog

How to determine WordPress blogs with most spam on multiple blog hosting server

Thursday, November 27th, 2014

determine_find_blogs_with_most_spam-on-multiple-wordpress-blogs-hosting-server-stop-and-clea-large-amounts-ofrcomment-spam
If you're a hosting company that is hosts Joomla / WordPress / ModX websites (each) on separate servers and thus you end up with servers hosting multiple WordPress customer Blogs only, lets say (100+ WP blogs per host) soon your MySQL blogs databases will be full (overfilled) with spam comments. Blogs with multitude of spam comments reduces the WordPress site attractiveness, takes useless disk space, makes wp databases hard to backup and slowing drastically the SQL server.

As our duty as system administrators is to keep the servers optimized (improve performance) and prevent spam-bots to hammer your Linux servers, its is always a good idea to keep an eye on which hosted blogs attract more spammers and cause server overheads and bad hardware optimization.

WordPress blogs keeps logged comments under database_name.wp_comments  (table) thus the quickest way to find out blogs with largest comments tables is to use Linux's find command and print out only comments tables larger than set size.

Here is how:

find /var/lib/mysql/ -type f -size +1024k -name "*_comments.MYD" -exec ls -lh {} ; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }'


/var/lib/mysql/funny-blog/wp_comments.MYD: 15,7M
/var/lib/mysql/wordblogger/wp_comments.MYD: 5,3M
/var/lib/mysql/loveblog/wp_comments.MYD: 50,5M

A comments database of 1MB means about at least 500+ comments, thus the blog loveblog's wp_comments.MYD = 50,5 Mbs contains probably about 10000! comments and should be definitely checked in a browser, if its overfilled with spam because of bad anti-spam policy or missing currently best wordpress spam catcher plugin Akismet. In cases of lack of client to protect his spam you can write quickly a script to auto mail him and ask him kindly to check / fix his blog spam.
In some cases it is useful to write a few liners bash script to automatically disable users with extraordinary blog spam comments databases (quickest way to do it is to move users blog data under quarantine directory and adding a Blog Suspended static html webpage with text like "Please contact support for more info".

1024k find arguments is 1MB, on a big hosted blogs this might be low and you might want to use (100Mb) = 102400kbytes.
You should note that *_comments.MYD in above find cmd is because though standardly wordpress sets wp_ as a prefix to its created skele table structures it is not always the case. 

In above command example find looks for spam comments in /var/lib/mysql (because this is a Debian Linux server), however on other MySQL custom installs, it might be in another dir i.e. /usr/local/mysql/data etc.

It is useful to set the wp_comments statistics output to execute at least once a day as a cronjob:

crontab -u root -e 00 24 * * * /usr/sbin/check_spammed_blogs.sh

vim /usr/check_soammed_blogs.sh

Set a script like:

#!/bin/sh
find /var/lib/mysql/ -type f -size +1024k -name "*_comments.MYD" -exec ls -lh {} ; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }' | tee -a /var/log/blogs_with_most_spam_comments.log

Though above commands is to run on GNU / Linux, for Windows servers based hosting you can  install GNUWin tools and adapt above cmd using windows standard commands or PowerShell to do the same.
Finally you can might want to use some other SQL script to clear blogs with enormously large tables from spam or clear all unapproved spam comments

Installing Usual PHP Apache needed modules for new Debian GNU / Linux servers

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

Almost evertime whether install a new Debian Linux server to host some websites, use the popular small and mid-sized hosting solution combination:
 

  • Apache webserver
  • PHP module to interpret the PHP programming code
  • MySQL to store the DB Backend

Installing the basis for on Debian is easy:


# apt-get install --yes apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork libapache2-mod-php \
mysql-server php5 php5-mysql mysql-client mysql-common phpmyadmin
....

This of course is in case, if necessery to run websites which are written to usephp code which is not thread safety (Use Apache child prefork technology to manage processes); For websites writen to be thread safety (not use some forking php functions like: php – exec(); fork(); etc. – I install apache2-mpm-prefork for better Webserver performance and speed.

This minimum collection of packages is good only for basic, websites and most Joomla, WordPress, Drupal or whatever custom PHP websites has to be hosted usually require much more PHP functions which are not part of this basic bundle. Hence as I said prior on almost all new Linux debian / ubuntu deb package based servers need to install following list of extra PHP deb packages:


# apt-get install --yes php-apc php-auth-ssl php-mail \
php-http php-net-smtp php-net-socket php-pear php5-cli php5-curl \
php5-gd php5-imagick php5-mapscript php5-mcrypt php5-odbc php5-sybase \
php5-xsl
...,

After installing this standard bundle of modules PHP is extended to support somenice functionalities like Image editting / convertion / resizing … various graphic editting functions as supported by infamous ImageMagick and GDlib, PEAR support (PHP Extension and Application Repository) bundle providing number of useful PHP classes.
php5-xInstalling Usual PHP Apache needed modules for new Debian GNU / Linux serverssl is usually necessery for websites which pass data in XSL format (a specific formatted XML data). php5-xsl is usually necessery for websites containing flash animationsPresentation, videos, games etc.

That is mostly it, hope this helps some sys admin like me who need configure new Debian based hosting server 🙂

Maldetect – Malware web content file scanner for GNU / Linux – Keep your hosting servers Malware clean

Tuesday, June 4th, 2013

Linux malware detect scan for malware from commandline / Fedora, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu 

It is so common nowadays that Shared hosting clients upload PHP / Javascript / Ajax scripts carelessly downloaded from somewhere containing malicious features or infected by third party script kiddie tools which replicate themselves after succesfully exploit some common PHP or Perl vulnerability. I'm sure even as time of writing this post probably millions of old un-updated Hosting Linux servers are silent Malware hives.
Therefore For Shared Hosting server servers it is useful to know about the existence of Maldetect – Linux Malware scanner also known under the name LMD.

Linux Maldetect – in what it does is very similar to Windows good Spyware Detect and Clean tool Malware Bytes. LMD uses Spyware definition database collected from network edge Intrusion detection systems who caught Web bugs commonly exploited as well as from custom user submissions of Malicious stuff. Maldetect's database can easily be exported and plays well together with ClamAV antivirus. LMD is very precious and is one of the must have outfits for hosting admins, as its use allows you to determine succesful cracking before system is rootkited and you have to audit for Backdoors or Rookit with rkhunter and chkroot

1. Install Linux MalDetect

LMD is young project so it does not still have a package deb and rpm package builds. Installation is done from source;

debian:~# wget http://www.rfxn.com/downloads/maldetect-current.tar.gz
debian:~# tar -xzf maldetect-current.tar.gz
debian:~# cd maldetect-*
debian:~# ./install.sh

Linux Malware Detect v1.4.1
            (C) 2002-2013, R-fx Networks <proj@r-fx.org>
            (C) 2013, Ryan MacDonald <ryan@r-fx.org>
inotifywait (C) 2007, Rohan McGovern <rohan@mcgovern.id.au>
This program may be freely redistributed under the terms of the GNU GPL

installation completed to /usr/local/maldetect
config file: /usr/local/maldetect/conf.maldet
exec file: /usr/local/maldetect/maldet
exec link: /usr/local/sbin/maldet
exec link: /usr/local/sbin/lmd
cron.daily: /etc/cron.daily/maldet

maldet(3143): {sigup} performing signature update check…
maldet(3143): {sigup} local signature set is version 201205035915
maldet(3143): {sigup} new signature set (2013060217799) available
maldet(3143): {sigup} downloaded http://www.rfxn.com/downloads/md5.dat
maldet(3143): {sigup} downloaded http://www.rfxn.com/downloads/hex.dat
maldet(3143): {sigup} downloaded http://www.rfxn.com/downloads/rfxn.ndb
maldet(3143): {sigup} downloaded http://www.rfxn.com/downloads/rfxn.hdb
maldet(3143): {sigup} downloaded http://www.rfxn.com/downloads/maldet-clean.tgz
maldet(3143): {sigup} signature set update completed
maldet(3143): {sigup} 11509 signatures (9641 MD5 / 1868 HEX)

2. Maldetect configs and binaries

Config is default installed in –  /usr/local/maldetect/conf.maldet
Main executed binary is placed in –  /usr/local/maldetect/maldet
There is a cron skele file placed in /etc/cron.daily/maldet. Its useful to run maldet via cron to check all sites on server and get e-mail reports.

3. Keep maldet up2date

debian:~# maldet --update-ver

Linux Malware Detect v1.4.2
            (C) 2002-2013, R-fx Networks <proj@r-fx.org>
            (C) 2013, Ryan MacDonald <ryan@r-fx.org>
inotifywait (C) 2007, Rohan McGovern <rohan@mcgovern.id.au>
This program may be freely redistributed under the terms of the GNU GPL v2

maldet(3511): {update} checking for available updates...
maldet(3511): {update} hashing install files and checking against server...
maldet(3511): {update} latest version already installed.

4. Update Maldetect definitions manually

Maldetect Malware definitions are designed to auto-update via cron. For people who don't like to waste CPU time and scrape on HDD with cronjob;

debian:~# maldet --update

5. Configure LMD

Tune according to your needs in config (/usr/local/maldetect/conf.maldet)

maxfilesize="768k"
email_alert=1
email_subj="Attention Malware found! Check your server!"
email_addr="hipo@www.pc-freak.net"

6. Scanning for Malware manually

debian:~# maldet -a /home,/var/www/blog,/sbin,/opt
....
Linux Malware Detect v1.4.2
(C) 2002-2013, R-fx Networks <proj@r-fx.org>
(C) 2013, Ryan MacDonald <ryan@r-fx.org>
inotifywait (C) 2007, Rohan McGovern <rohan@mcgovern.id.au>
This program may be freely redistributed under the terms of the GNU GPL v2

maldet(21709): {scan} signatures loaded: 11509 (9641 MD5 / 1868 HEX)
maldet(21709): {scan} building file list for /var/www/blog, this might take awhile...
maldet(21709): {scan} file list completed, found 6814 files...
maldet(21709): {scan} found ClamAV clamscan binary, using as scanner engine...
maldet(21709): {scan} scan of /var/www/blog (6814 files) in progress...

maldet(21709): {scan} scan completed on /var/www/blog: files 6814, malware hits 0, cleaned hits 0
maldet(21709): {scan} scan report saved, to view run: maldet --report 062813-1012.21709
...

As you see from above output  you can view Maldet report by issuing:

debian:~# maldet --report 062813-1012.21709

malware detect scan report for pcfreak:

SCAN ID: 070113-1223.7481

TIME: Jul  1 12:24:20 +0300

PATH: .

TOTAL FILES: 9164

TOTAL HITS: 326

TOTAL CLEANED: 0


NOTE: quarantine is disabled! set quar_hits=1 in conf.maldet or to quarantine results run:

debian:~# maldet -q 070113-1223.7481

FILE HIT LIST:

{CAV}Exploit.SafariCrash-1 : ./osX/dos/1715.html

{CAV}Exploit.PPC : ./osX/local/1973.pl

{CAV}Exploit.Perl.Sadmin : ./solaris/remote/101.pl

{CAV}Exploit.FirefoxCrash : ./multiple/dos/1716.html

{HEX}exp.linux.setuid.13 : ./multiple/local/7129.sh

{CAV}HTML.Shellcode : ./multiple/remote/2082.html

 

In case some badware is captured by Maldet to quarantine files run suggested command:

debian:~# maldet -q 070113-1223.7481

Linux Malware Detect v1.4.2

            (C) 2002-2013, R-fx Networks <proj@r-fx.org>

            (C) 2013, Ryan MacDonald <ryan@r-fx.org>

inotifywait (C) 2007, Rohan McGovern <rohan@mcgovern.id.au>

This program may be freely redistributed under the terms of the GNU GPL v2

 

maldet(21341): {quar} malware quarantined from './php/remote/2008.php' to '/usr/local/maldetect/quarantine/2008.php.19608'

maldet(21341): {clean} restoring /usr/local/maldetect/quarantine/2008.php.19608 for cleaning attempt

maldet(21341): {clean} trying to clean ./php/remote/2008.php with base64.inject.unclassed rule

maldet(21341): {clean} rescanning ./php/remote/2008.php for malware hits

maldet(21341): {clean} clean successful on ./php/remote/2008.php

 

Just for a close up below is a list of common 60 Malwares found on Hosting servers (taken from Maldetect Website);

base64.inject.unclassed     perl.ircbot.xscan
bin.dccserv.irsexxy         perl.mailer.yellsoft
bin.fakeproc.Xnuxer         perl.shell.cbLorD
bin.ircbot.nbot             perl.shell.cgitelnet
bin.ircbot.php3             php.cmdshell.c100
bin.ircbot.unclassed        php.cmdshell.c99
bin.pktflood.ABC123         php.cmdshell.cih
bin.pktflood.osf            php.cmdshell.egyspider
bin.trojan.linuxsmalli      php.cmdshell.fx29
c.ircbot.tsunami            php.cmdshell.ItsmYarD
exp.linux.rstb              php.cmdshell.Ketemu
exp.linux.unclassed         php.cmdshell.N3tshell
exp.setuid0.unclassed       php.cmdshell.r57
gzbase64.inject             php.cmdshell.unclassed
html.phishing.auc61         php.defash.buno
html.phishing.hsbc          php.exe.globals
perl.connback.DataCha0s     php.include.remote
perl.connback.N2            php.ircbot.InsideTeam
perl.cpanel.cpwrap          php.ircbot.lolwut
perl.ircbot.atrixteam       php.ircbot.sniper
perl.ircbot.bRuNo           php.ircbot.vj_denie
perl.ircbot.Clx             php.mailer.10hack
perl.ircbot.devil           php.mailer.bombam
perl.ircbot.fx29            php.mailer.PostMan
perl.ircbot.magnum          php.phishing.AliKay
perl.ircbot.oldwolf         php.phishing.mrbrain
perl.ircbot.putr4XtReme     php.phishing.ReZulT
perl.ircbot.rafflesia       php.pktflood.oey
perl.ircbot.UberCracker     php.shell.rc99
perl.ircbot.xdh             php.shell.shellcomm