7v5w7go9ub0o wrote: > Romain BERGE wrote: >> Hey list, >> >> I am planning buying a laptop. I would like to install a hardened >> (workstation) profile on it. >> >> Which hardware features/components should I take care of ? (to be the >> most compatible with hardened) In the opposite, are there some >> hardware components/brand to avoid ? >> >> Thanks >> >> > > Went through a similar exercise a few years ago; concluded that one: > > - first chooses the laptop that meets his needs (I wanted a 2 pounder > with good screen and graphics to carry about in a back pack, with > frequent stops at hotspots) > > - second googles about for linux success/failure stories about that > laptop. Gentoo has some great documentation and explanations concerning > Linux; Ubuntu has some great user lists regarding specific hardware. My > Sony was 95% Linux good to go, with detailed Ubuntu discussions about > xorg.conf. > > - third if it works on Linux, it'll likely work for hardened. (this was > true for 32bit on my laptop; 64 may be different; I'll know shortly ) > > FWIW, IMHO a hardened profile, along with other precautions, makes a > lot of sense on a laptop as there is all sorts of mischief occurring at > anonymous, college and Saturday-afternoon hotspots - some of it quite > sophisticated due to "pen test" software. It's a wild west that you'll > not experience on your firewalled desktop. > Just a side comment on this... I have scripts that figure out where the heck I am when networking comes up, and based on that decide what, if any, service(s) to bring up. When the current network is on "other", NO services are started at all - even X is started with "-tcp nolisten" so there are no open ports. Scratch that - dnsmasq is listening on loopback, but that's it.
Maybe it's not all that's necessary, but it's a good first line of defense. Dale Pontius
