Practical UNIX Security Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Practical UNIX Security - Assignment ExampleThere argon sundry(a) versions of Unix available as yet they are slightly different. The most admired varieties of Unix are GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris and MacOS X (Rosen Kenneth H., 2006). UNIX security is the panache of protecting a UNIX or any other Unix-like operating system (Ross Seth T., 2000). A safety atmosphere put upnot be obtained by just designing conception of these operating systems but by attentive administrative and user practices. LDAP that is Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is nothing but an application protocol utilize for editing and reading directories over an internet protocol network (Morimoto Rand, 2008). Directory here refers to the set of organized records, for instance, a telephone directory is organized in an alphabetical record of people and organizations with the address and contact number in every record. LDAP not only stores information about persons but is also used to find encryption certificates, p rinters, pointers and other various services on a network. It also facilitates single signon where a single tidings for an operator is shared among various services. The LDAP is most suitable for any type of directory in cases where in-frequent updates and quick lookups are the requirements. As it is a protocol, LDAP does not describe how course of studys work on server side as head as on the client side. It defines the language used as communication for client programs to speak to servers. On the side of client, a client may be having an address book, an email program, or it can be a printer browser. The server may use only LDAP or may have various other ways for data exchange and LDAP could just an add-on method. Suppose if someone has an email program it may or may not supports LDAP. Most of the LDAP clients have option of reading from a server only. Apart from this, search abilities are also different for different users. Few of the clients have option of update or writing in formation however LDAP does not provide security or encryption so additional protection like encrypted SSL connection becomes imperative (Ciampa Mark, 2008). LDAP offers number of features which is difficult to understand at a glance. Below given are some of the features of LDAP. Remote Communications Sometimes Remote communication can be or sometimes it cannot be a security issue (Negus Christopher, 2009). If unlimited access is provided to non-sensitive LDAP records then(prenominal) the security of data becomes doubtful. In much(prenominal) situation one possibly become susceptible to dos and dont dos assault through cruel LDAP query loads. save it is not that important but still it should be taken care of. You may choose to take using simple clear text passwords and without using any additional security if you are legitimate that all the LDAP communications will occur inside trusted network only. However in such cases it becomes easier to scrutinize sensitive data or to snif f traffic or obtain passwords sent in clear. The risk of sniffing, snooping, man in the middle and other various risks increase when a communication takes derriere across a non reliable network. The increasing emphasis on monitoring (cn=monitor) and run-time configuration (RTC) may retain it a rule that LDAP browsers develop into the remote consoles to administers LDAP server (Kopper Karl, 2005). This traffic is highly sensitive by its nature. The adjacent step depends upon the answer to the question that do we need to protect password