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So I've read in Mark Sobell's book on Linux, that Linux by default is open to remote administration. Now seen as I'm running a Fedora 17, on a laptop I never have to administrate anything on remotely, I see this as a door to my house needlessly being open to a picklock. Now I'm not worried about my passwords being bruteforced by even a FPGA, but all kinds of security breaches simply happen sometimes (and often from inside), so I'd like to close this window of opportunity to any hacker just to be diligent. And preferably also monitor this change.

So how do I disable Linux from allowing remote logins/remote access in general?

Deer Hunter
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Happy
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    I don't think that any of the regular distributions have the SSH daemon enabled by default; you have to start the service intentionally... – jasonwryan Oct 27 '12 at 09:31
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    This process is called "Hardening an OS", and should be executed on each OS after installation. Look at this Q/A: http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/50206/24379 for useful tips, although it's called securing web servers, NIST has very useful guidelines for workstations, too. – Deer Hunter Oct 27 '12 at 10:07

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Nope, by default, it's disabled.

And you really need to know what exactly the remote access method it tells, SSH or maybe Remote X session, or VNC?

That really depends.

daisy
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    So you're saying all of these remote administration systems are disabled by default? Also isn't X session more like just the GUI, so you still to use login to access that? – Happy Oct 27 '12 at 11:21
  • Anyhow it was two weeks ago since I read it and I had noted the page but somehow I've misplaced that note =S I've tried searching the online version of the book with "remote" as keyword but all I've found again is the note that Mac OS X doesn't allow remote logins by default, in a block of text about linux login in's via ssh.(thus kinda implying linux does) but I'm pretty sure that wasn't what I was searching for – Happy Oct 27 '12 at 11:30