ProShield is a system administration program for Ubuntu/Debian Linux. It helps ensure your
system is secure and up-to-date by checking many different aspects of
your system. Regular use is recommended.
Whether you are a Linux novice or a system administrator with a dozen
servers, ProShield is designed to be useable by all. ProShield's main
goal is to help secure a newly installed box (computer), as well as
maintain the security of an existing box on a maintenance basis. It's part security, part security administration.
The main features of ProShield are:
- Helps you backup your system weekly.
- Checks for new software releases, in order to see if installed software is reasonably up to date. Smart-suggestion to upgrade if an important package is
released.
- Disk-space check to find any partitions that are 70% full or more.
- Checks for extra root accounts.
- Checks account & password files for correct access control permissions.
- Makes sure a few security-hazardous packages are not installed.
- Checks to make sure a packet sniffer is not running.
- Removes unneeded packages from the local package archive.
- Checks to see if 'apt' is fetching unnecessary information when checking for software updates.
- Makes sure system time is accurate.
- Checks to make sure the user isn't logged into the system (GUI) as root.
- Checks the configuration of the ssh server ([sshd] if installed) for insecure settings.
- At
runtime, ProShield will also check to see if there has been a new
version released, and can download and install it at the user's
preference.
When the program is done analyzing your system, it displays an
"advisory report", and then (if necessary), guides you through a series
of interactive questions to help you solve any problems it found.
ProShield is released as a Debian package, ready for easy
installation. After installation, type "proshield" to start the
program (you need to do this in a shell/terminal).
In December 2007 I updated ProShield to make sure it still worked. I also began using it again and developing it again. The result is the v3.8.0 and later releases. Users of v3.7.47 are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version. Although my main development platform is Ubuntu, as of v3.8.10 I am testing against mainline Debian as well.
Download the latest version: ProShield
v3.8.21 (Or View the Changelog)
Easy Install: If you don't know what a Debian package is, or
you'd just like to install ProShield painlessly right now, you can
paste this command into a shell/terminal: (you should also use this if you intend to install the ProShield package from the command line, as this method will resolve dependencies)
wget http://proshield.sf.net/ps-install; sudo sh ps-install; rm ps-install;
My apologies to everyone who has been stuck in a ProShield upgrade loop in the present or past. Starting with v3.8.10 there is a failsafe secondary upgrade method that uses the above Easy Install, and should ensure upgrade loops are nothing more than a bad memory.
Official SourceForge.net project page: Click here
First version released 8/9/2004. Latest version released on 2/18/2009.
