UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello there,

first of all: I do not want to become a hacker. you cannot do that. you cannot learn that from a book.
Don't think I'm some kind of a script-kiddie.

now that's settled let's start.

I've been trying around with a lot of OS lately.
I have backtrack5 installed on my notebook, ubuntu 10.04 on my desktop, tried openSolaris, freeBSD, mint, openSUSE pretty much every popular Linux/UNIX i can get my hands on.

I was told that Backtrack5 is the best security/penetration-testing based OS that is out there right now but I'm kind of reconsidering this...

If i think about this stuff logically wouldn't freeBSD be a better "ground" to build from? I mean, it's practically comes with "less" and you can build it up as you want, with all you need and everything you don't need (correct me if i'm wrong).

I've had a lot of lessons on UNIX and Linux stuff lately, got comfortable using the Solaris we use at school to practice, use ubuntu and backtrack at home. I gained a good knowledge of commands and started shell-scripting a few weeks back as well as the C-Programming language.

I'm very interested in IT-Security, that's where I want to go in the future, so what do you say?

Backtrack 5 or freeBSD?
Is it possible to make freeBSD "a better backtrack"?

Am I right when I say that I would gain a TON of knowledge using freeBSD and experiment with it, trying to build something "of my own"?

I know that I might be totally wrong here, but that's why I'm asking the pro's ;-)

This is pretty much about learning more about the world of UNIX and Linux.

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here.

greetings.

You probably want a minimal OS - try DSL. (Damn Small Linux) And. Security is not just the OS. About 75% of security revolves around physical security and user practices.

Hackers depend to a large extent on things like: people opening email attachments, clicking buttons on a web page, doing something stupid with passwords, leaving secure VPN connections open, or using compromised SSL certificates.

Governments hack into systems frequently. See:

Mikko Hypponen: Three types of online attack | Video on TED.com

Thanks, for the reply. I know about these aspects though... I should have written that too.
What would you say when we were only talking about the OS itself?
Isn't it better to build something up yourself? That would mean you would know the weak points of the system better right?

Not necessarily. Read the 'Shellcoders Handbook' (Edition 1) by Jack Koziol. Or the 2nd ed is more modern.

You need specific information about individual modules, that may change with each release of software or kernel code. Exhaustive work on one tiny subset of the OS world may not reveal what you hoped it would.

If you want to start from scratch and learn as you go, Gentoo is also educational. Its idea of a "cd installer" is a livecd with fdisk, mkfs, and tar so you can unpack their stage files onto your manually created partitions and chroot from there... Google the 'gentoo handbook' for step-by-step instructions.

Once installed it can do quite a lot for you, 'emerge foo' installs foo, but it's still extremely flexible and doesn't force a lot of choices on you.

Why don't take a look at OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD?

Anyway security aspect is a problem should be tackled as a whole, don't limited to the operating system, more or less secure.

Excellent point. A well-configured Linux system is more secure than a poorly configured BSD system, and vice versa.