Page 56 - StudyBook.pdf

40 Chapter 1 • General Security Concepts: Access Control, Authentication, and Auditing

Disabling Non-essential Processes

Processes running on your systems should be evaluated regarding their necessity to
operations. Many processes are installed by default, but are rarely or never used by
the OS. In addition to disabling or removing these processes, you should regularly
evaluate the running processes on the machine to make sure they are necessary.As
with disabling unnecessary protocols and services and systems, you must be aware
of the need for the processes and their potential for abuse that could lead to system
downtime, crashes, or breach. UNIX, Linux,Windows server and workstation sys-
tems, and Netware systems all have mechanisms for monitoring and tracking pro-
cesses, which will give you a good idea of their level of priority and whether they
are needed in the environments you are running.

Disabling Non-Essential Programs

Like the other areas we have discussed, it is appropriate to visit the process of dis-
abling or removing unnecessary programs.Applications that run in the background
are often undetected in normal machine checks, and can be compromised or oth-
erwise affect your systems negatively.An evaluation of installed programs is always
appropriate.Aside from the benefit of more resources being available, it also elimi-
nates the potential that a breach will occur.

EXERCISE 1.04

DISABLING WINDOWS 2003 OR WINDOWS XP SERVICES
As discussed in this section, it is important to eliminate unused services,
protocols, processes, and applications to eliminate potential security vul-
nerabilities. It is also important to eliminate these extra functions and
capabilities to maximize the performance of the systems. Items not in
use require no resources, so there is an added benefit to disabling
unused portions of the systems. In this exercise, we will disable the
Telnet service to eliminate the potential for attack.

NOTE

Be cautious when accessing or modifying controls that may disable or
remove system services or processes. Incorrect settings or use of the con-
trols may disable your machine and require a complete reinstallation.

www.syngress.com