Server Security
From SusoSight
I"ve heard this saying so many times.
Security by obscurity is not security
Its wrong. The first thing you should know about computer security is that any person smart enough and willing enough is going to be able to break into your machine. It could be via any of the following methods or others not listed here. Some depend on others.
- Normal commands and bad permissions on directories and files
- Buffer overflows
- Password cracking (or maybe just guessing someone's password)
- Cryptographic attack
- Network sniffing
- Poorly designed software
- Bug in application
- Physical security breach (theft, direct access to hard drives, ethernet cables, etc.)
- Social Engineering - My favorite example. Giving someone a piece of chocolate for their password and the like.
Thus, this means that all security is security by obscurity. It is simply a matter of what length you go to in order to prevent break-ins. The further you go probably the better.
Take this example, many administrators count on chroot environments preventing an application from breaking out of a certain directory, but even some of the developers have stated that this is a bad idea and chroot is not as safe as everyone thinks.