From the course: Linux Hardening

Unlock this course with a free trial

Join today to access over 25,200 courses taught by industry experts.

Minimizing the OS attack surface, part two

Minimizing the OS attack surface, part two - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Linux Hardening

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Minimizing the OS attack surface, part two

“

Hello, and welcome back to Cybrary's Linux Hardening course. I'm your instructor, Corey Holzer, and this lesson is a continuation of the last lesson about minimizing the attack surface of the operating system. Let's go. The objective for this lesson is to look at the how and why we disable and uninstall X11 desktop environment. If you're unfamiliar with X11, it is the foundation for Linux graphical user interface or GUI. Gnome, KDE and other desktop interfaces sit on top of X11. X11 basically functions as the middleware between the underlying functionality of the operating system and the GUI that you interact with as the user. Now, when we're talking about a server, there are clear advantages to disabling and uninstalling X11. It can improve performance because the server does not need to dedicate resources towards the GUI. It also frees up storage space on the server. It's also important to keep in mind that it supports the concept that we should remove functionality we do not use or…

Contents