Secure system design concepts helped deploy and maintain computing systems in a safe state.
So in this context, this system is any host computers such as a server, workstation, a laptop and
network device or a mobile device.
Now, in an ideal world, systems start in a safe state.
Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world, and administrators need to be proactive to secure systems
before deployment and to keep them safe after deployment.
So in this section, we're going to summarize a few steps used to secure hosts.
Boosting is the practice of making an operating system or OS or application more secure than its default
installation.
It helps eliminate vulnerabilities from default configurations, misconfigurations and weak configurations.
Now, the basic principle associated with secure system design is minimal functionality.
So, in other words, systems should only be deployed with the applications, services and protocols
that they need to meet their purpose.
If a service or protocol is not running on a system, attackers will not be able to attack it.
Mm-Hmm.
Now, give you a simple example, if FTP is not working and is not present in the system, well, then
this system is not vulnerable to any file transfer protocol or FTP attack.
So in addition to disabling unnecessary services to mitigate vulnerabilities, it's also important to
remove unnecessary software.
So there are often bugs and vulnerabilities in the software that nobody's going to be thinking about
because, hey, we don't use this anyway.
Although patching software closes vulnerabilities frequently, you can certainly eliminate them by eliminating
any unnecessary application.
So a little story years ago, I was I was working in a small training company and one of the servers
had a default configuration, which caused a major security vulnerability for windows.
And we were using the server as a file server, but since it was not powered by the default configuration,
Microsoft was also running the web server, internet information services or.
Anyway, at one point.
Attackers released the Nima virus, which exploited a vulnerability within iOS.
Microsoft released a patch for iOS, but since this is installed by default and we were not using it,
we weren't managing it either.
Ultimately, the name the virus found our server and this worm component quickly infected our network.
If the IRS software had not been installed, this server would not have been vulnerable.
By the way, Namdar is ad backwards.
If you didn't know.
OK, so it's also important to disable unnecessary accounts, for example, the guest account.
Well, it's disabled by default on existing Windows systems.
It should remain disabled unless there is a special need.
And some apps will also include back door accounts now back doors and access point to an application
or service that bypasses normal security mechanisms.
Developers will use back doors for legitimate purposes to view the internal functioning of an application
or for ease of administration, however, use a backdoor is strongly discouraged in the last released
version.
If there is a back door, you can expect attackers to find it and exploit it.
Similarly, if a system or application has a default account with a default password, you got to change
a password.
I mean, come on.
Right?
OK.