[CentOS] Hardening CentOS by removing "hacker" tools

Fri Jun 6 23:09:28 UTC 2008
John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>

Filipe Brandenburger wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My boss asked me to harden a CentOS box by removing "hacker" tools,
> such as nmap, tcpdump, nc (netcat), telnet, etc.
>
> I would like to know which list of packages would you remove from a
> base install. I would appreciate if someone could point me to a
> "standard" way of doing this. I know there are procedures for
> hardening a machine (I remember reading about Bastille Linux) but I
> don't know how effective they are and if they include the removal of
> such tools in their procedures.
>   

those are all client-side tools.     if someone gains access to them, 
the box is already hacked.    how exactly does that harden it?

most all of those (certainly, nmap, tcpdump and telnet) are useful 
diagnostic tools for troubleshooting network connectivity issues.