Re: Security matters: keep thy doors closed!

[cjf]

As it appears, there really is no web site at this point that could claim to be 100% hacker proof.

Many try, none succeed. People can grasp that it's impossible to prove a program has no bugs, why can't they understand you can't prove something is 100% secure?

I’m wondering what are the steps undertaken to make this monastery secure, for example?

Obscurity. The code is only provided to a select group of people. Or maybe that detracts from it's security, you be the judge.

Some of the things to watch out for are...

Disable all services you don't need, choose your software carefully, implement a good security policy, and keep up to date with all the patches. Security is very simple.

And a few links from my homenode:

• Cert Advisories
• SANS Institute
• Top 20 Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities
• Basic Host Security Considerations
• Security Focus
• Counterpane
• Attack Trees
• Crypto-Gram Newsletter
• GNU Privacy Guard
• GNU Privacy Guard Manual
• The WWW Security Faq
• Cern Security Handbook - Passwords
• Linux Security HOWTO

A super search for security on this site will also turn up many relevant nodes.

Update: Oops, I forgot to flame you for using the term hacker to refer to crackers. Consider yourself flamed ;).

YAU: to clarify the point on obscurity, yes the everything engine this site runs on is open source. However, last time I asked, the modified version that runs Perlmonks is not available to just anyone. Like I said, this has it's advantages and disadvantages.