Hardening your computer

[Zee09]

Wasn't saying you were, just noting that there are legitimate reasons beyond paranoia about being phished or "hacked" for restricting PM's. Mine are "friends" only, so people I follow can PM me.

I've received some pretty wild PM's over the years ranging from character attacks and outright threats of violence to "let me explain this to you" in response to comments I've made on the open forum by people, as I noted, that I do not want to be having an "off the record" conversation with. So, it's just easier to restrict it.

I guess I am lucky...
I only get kindness from PMs here. I do harass @AutoMechanic though.

 

[350Rocket]

Some of the checks that impact a score do so even with services that are disabled. For example, SSH is disabled on my box, but it still runs all the security checks against the SSH daemon configuration, which has three different things that impact my score. So even though SSHD isn't even running, because I have the default configs in place for it, my score is negatively impacted.

I recently had a trojan on my computer, which was likely from having utorrent. I got rid of it and any other extra crap or anything that looked suspicious. Then I ran Tron on it. It feels like a brand new computer now, I hadn't noticed that it had slowed down until the day I realized I had a virus it started to really bog down.
I also got a fraudulent phone call pretending to be a credit card company (called from their 1800 number) and had my name and address. Trying to trick me into giving them my card info and sin number. I think they got my information from hacking the computer. Unfortunately I'm not as computer knowledgeable as I used to be. I only know the basics these days.

 

[Owen Lucas]

Then I ran Tron on it. It feels like a brand new computer now, I hadn't noticed that it had slowed down until the day I realized I had a virus it started to really bog down.

I just Googled this program and it looks interesting. How long did Tron take and did you find any settings changed or have to make adjustments afterwards?

 

[350Rocket]

I just Googled this program and it looks interesting. How long did Tron take and did you find any settings changed or have to make adjustments afterwards?

I kind of let it do it's thing while I was doing something on my phone and when I went to bed, finishing it in the morning. So I'm not sure exactly how long it took but I think maybe an hour total for the different stages to be completed. I didn't have any issues or have to do anything as a result. I feel like it runs faster and it cleared a lot of unused files out, saving a lot of storage space. I think I've used about 80gb out of 512gb after the cleanup.

 

[350Rocket]

I kind of let it do it's thing while I was doing something on my phone and when I went to bed, finishing it in the morning. So I'm not sure exactly how long it took but I think maybe an hour total for the different stages to be completed. I didn't have any issues or have to do anything as a result. I feel like it runs faster and it cleared a lot of unused files out, saving a lot of storage space. I think I've used about 80gb out of 512gb after the cleanup.

Forgot to mention, this is a 10 year old laptop. So if you have a late model higher end PC it shouldn't take long at all to run.

 

[Hall]

No, I ran it using sudo as noted in the instructions PDF that came with it.

Same here (I'm familiar with Unix-style command line). At this point, I want to figure out where this "list" of files that I said to "Allow anyway" is and clean them up.

 

[OVERKILL]

Same here (I'm familiar with Unix-style command line). At this point, I want to figure out where this "list" of files that I said to "Allow anyway" is and clean them up.

Interesting, I was not prompted at all.

 

[uc50ic4more]

I haven't read through this whole thread; please forgive any redundancy: Does anyone know how CIS-hardened images (or stock installs with a CIS script) of RHEL, Ubuntu, etc. fare with this?

 

[spackard]

I haven't read through this whole thread; please forgive any redundancy: Does anyone know how CIS-hardened images (or stock installs with a CIS script) of RHEL, Ubuntu, etc. fare with this?

CIS is/are commercial equivalent. Some of their stuff is free. When it comes to automation is when you have to pay for a membership. I tried pricing one and they wanted $20k. The payment card industry likely wants you to meet a CIS benchmark. In the end it depends on who accredits you.

Also, they move a little faster. They have something out for RHEL9. The other folks don’t yet, but I expect it’ll be out in a few weeks to a month.