Security

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I was wondering about the security of these Aspire One's, since it is a mobile device it seems to me it's going to be used a lot in Starbucks and places like that where anyone can have a go at your laptop. Since it's a linux box the security issues are well known, and the usual answer is 'run iptables and set up some firewall rules' or 'have no open ports'. Both is probably a good idea.

The One, however, doesnt have iptables either compiled into the kernel or available as a module.
[root@localhost ~]# iptables -L
FATAL: Module ip_tables not found.
iptables v1.4.1.1: can't initialize iptables table `filter': iptables who? (do you need to insmod?)
Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.

Either I'm not seeing it or it's just not there.

Add to that that the box has a few ports open, X is listening on 6000/tcp, dhcp is listening on 68/udp, and cups on 631/tcp. Seems like if you are not using cups you can turn it off

sudo /etc/init.d/cups stop - will turn it off
sudo chkconfig --del cups - will remove it (who prints to paper these days anyway?)

As for dhcp, it's a necesary evil these days. Someone else can say how to disable it.

The X server however is a different thing. No modern distro should be shipping linux with a listening X server. The problem here is that they dont use GDM/KDM/XDM, so putting the option
-nolisten tcp
in the usual places wont do you any good, as someone else has pointed out on these forums Linpus uses an ugly hack to fire up X in the init scripts.

The way to stop it from listening is this.
Open /etc/rc.d/rc.S with an editor *as root* (launch your editor with sudo from a terminal)
edit the line
/usr/bin/xinit -- -br>/dev/null 2>&1 &
to be
/usr/bin/xinit -- -br -nolisten tcp>/dev/null 2>&1 &

reboot

voila

[root@localhost ~]# netstat -an
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:68 0.0.0.0:*
Active UNIX domain sockets (servers and established)
Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node Path
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 635 @/tmp/dbus-15dtMjVsF
etc (the unix domain sockets are local, not networked)

port 68 udp is dhcp, like we said.
 
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