Hackers Beware

Vulnerable Areas of UNIX

Vulnerabilities can exist in any piece of software, and the type of exploit can vary greatly. Therefore, in this section, when we look at vulnerable areas of UNIX, we are looking at the areas where most vulnerabilities are found, not all vulnerabilities. If a company is aware of the high-risk areas, it can look more closely at those areas before actually deploying a mission-critical UNIX system. The following are the key areas a company should concentrate on to have a secure UNIX system:

• Sample scripts

• Extraneous software

• Open ports

• Unpatched systems

Sample Scripts

In many cases, when UNIX applications are installed on a server, they are installed with sample scripts. This is because most UNIX systems have compilers, so ...