How I spend my first 5 minutes on a server
I went through the article and then read every single post on this thread.  I am not a security expert so I won't even try to contribute except to say that I see a lot of people offering criticism without taking the extra step of explaining how they would go about hardening a fresh Linux install (or a pile-o-servers in a rack, whatever is applicable).It'd sure be nice for those of us who are not security experts to read alternative approaches rather than, paraphrasing and not picking on anyone, "using a firewall is dumb" or "blocking ssh is pointless".I like isolated ideas such as using a script to completely automate the provisioning of new boxes.  Kind of a no-brainer if you ask me.  The problem is that such recommendations are not followed by something like "Here's the script I use on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS".How about it guys?  Would you care to attempt to produce a canonical HN "How to harden your server" reference?Maybe one of the security experts on HN can start a repository on Github to evolve a canonical script.  I'm pretty much 100% Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, so it is my hope that this is one of the platforms that is addressed.I did some looking around and this is what I found (I am in no position to evaluate the merits of any of these at anything beyond an intermediate level):https://github.com/bluedragonz/server-shieldhttps://github.com/eglimi/linux_hardeninghttp://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-security.htmlhttp://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1002167http://www.thefanclub.co.za/how-to/how-secure-ubuntu-1204-lt...http://www.andrewault.net/2010/05/17/securing-an-ubuntu-serv...http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1919111https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/security.htmlhttp://www.sans.org/score/checklists/linuxchecklist.pdfhttp://nvd.nist.gov/scap/content/stylesheet/scap-rhel5-docum...http://blogs.csoonline.com/ubuntu_lts_vulnerability_scrub_ag...http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=510812