On Tuesday 23 December 2008 15:38:17 Warren Young wrote: > Michael Simpson wrote: > >> GRC reports that ports are stealthed > > > > Try www.auditmypc.com or nmap-online.com rather than grc to look for open > > ports > > What advantages do they have, in your opinion? > > >> there a better way than opening port 143? > > > > ssh tunnelling? > > I agree, though the default CentOS sshd configuration requires some > tightening down to trust it on Internet-facing servers, IMHO: > > 1. In /etc/ssh/sshd_config, set "PasswordAuthentication no". No matter > how good your password, it isn't as good as using keys. Remember, > forwarding ssh opens it to pounding 24x7 from any of the millions on > zombie boxes on the Internet. > > 2. On the machine(s) that you want to allow logins from, run "ssh-keygen > -t rsa" to generate a key pair, if you haven't already. Then copy the > contents of ~/.ssh/id-rsa.pub into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on your home > server. These keys are used to authenticate the remote system, in lieu > of a password or physical token. You could put these keys on a USB > stick instead, if you didn't want to keep them permanently on the remote > hosts. > > 3. Disable SSHv1 protocol support in /etc/ssh/sshd_config: "Protocol 2", > not "Protocol 2,1". SSHv1 has known weaknesses. Boggles my mind that > it's still enabled by default.... > > 4. Same file, set "PermitRootLogin no" if it isn't already. > > (Aside: I also like to set up sudo with one account allowed to do > anything, then lock the root account, so the only way to get root access > is to log in as a regular user then sudo up, reducing the risk of > passwordless keys.) > > Having done all this, you're ready to allow remote access: > > 5. In your router, forward a high-numbered port to 22 on the server. If > it's not smart enough to use different port numbers on either side, you > can change the sshd configuration so it listens on a different port > instead. I like to use 22022 for this. > > This is *not* security through obscurity. It's simply a way to reduce > the amount of log spam you have to dig through when monitoring your > system's behavior. Everything that appears in your logs should be > *interesting*. Constant port knocking from worms and script kiddies is > not interesting. > > In case you've not done ssh tunelling, Anne, the command that does what > you want, having done all the above is: > > $ ssh -p22022 -L10143:my.server.com:143 anne at my.server.com > > This sets up port 10143 on the local system to be redirected through the > ssh session to the IMAP port on your home server. You don't want to > redirect 143 to 143 because that would require you to run ssh as root. > It also prevents you from using this on a system that itself has an IMAP > server. > > With the tunnel up, you can set up your mail client to connect to port > 10143 on localhost, and you'll be looking at your remote mail server. Hello again. You were kind enough to give me this advice last December. I've another holiday approaching and thought it was time that I got this sorted. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I can do this, so I'm asking your opinion. My router is a Netgear DG834G. I can create a service, tell it which ports to open, and say which local IP I want it sent to. However, I can't see any way to set the port to which it should be forwarded as anything other than the incoming port. IOW, I can enable the new service Ext-ssh, which accepts incoming traffic on port 22022, and direct it to my server on 192.168.0.40, but I can't see how to make it send that traffic to port 22 on the server. Am I totally misunderstanding this? Really all I want is to be able to log in to the server if I get an email alert that there is a problem or security updates pending. If I can get this sorted, I'll look again at how to route the IMAP mail through the tunnel too. Anne -- New to KDE4? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org Just found a cool new feature? Add it to UserBase -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20090323/21d13956/attachment-0002.sig>